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HORACE WALPOLE 

AND HIS WORLD 






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HORACE WALPOLE 

AND HIS WORLD 

SELECT PASSAGES FROM HIS LETTERS 



EDITED BY 



L. B. SEELEY, M.A. 

Sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge 

author of 

"fanny burnky and her friends" 



NEW EDITION 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1895 



V*: 



Gift 
W. L- Shoemaker 
1 5 '06 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

VACUC 

Introduction — Birth and Parentage — Education — Appoint- 
ments — Travels — Parliamentary Career — Retirement — 
Fortune — Strawberry Hill — Collections — Writings — Print- 
ing Press — Accession to Title— Death — Character — Poli- 
tical Conduct and Opinions — The Slave Trade — Strikes — 
Views of Literature — Friendships — Charities — Chatterton — 
Letters I 

CHAPTER II. 

Country Life— Ranelagh Gardens — The Rebel Lords — The 
Earthquake — A Frolic at Vauxhall — Capture of a House- 
breaker — Strawberry Hill — The Beautiful Gunnings — Sterne 33 

CHAPTER III. 

A new Reign — Funeral of the late King — Houghton revisited 
— Election at Lynn — Marriage of George III. — His Coro- 
nation 62 

CHAPTER IV. 

General Taste for Pleasure— Entertainments at Twickenham 
and Esher— Miss Chudleigh's Ball — Masquerade at Rich- 
mond House — The Gallery at Strawberry Hill — Balls — The 
Duchess of Queensberry — Petition of the Periwig-makers — 
Ladies' Head-gear — Almack's — "The Castle of Otranto" — 
Plans for a Bower — A late Dinner — Walpole's Idle Life — 
Social Usages 78 



vi Contents, 

CHAPTER V. 

FAGB 

The Gout — Visits to Paris — Bath — John Wesley — Bad 
Weather — English Summers — Quitting Parliament — 
Madame du Deffand — Human Vanity — The Banks of the 
Thames — A Subscription Masquerade— Extravagance of the 
Age — The Pantheon — Visiting Stowe with Princess Amelia 
— George Montagu — The Countess of Ossory — Powder- 
Mills Blown up at Hounslow — Distractions of Business and 
Pleasure 99 

CHAPTER VI. 

Lord Nuneham — Madame de Sevigne - — Charles Fox — Mrs. 
Clive and Cliveden — Goldsmith and Garrick — Dearth of 
News — Madame de Trop— A Bunch of Grapes — General 
Election — Perils by Land and Water — Sir Horace Mann — 
Lord Clive — The History of Manners — A Traveller from 
Lima — The Scavoir Vivre Club — Reflections on Life — The 
Pretender's Happiness — Paris Fashions — Madame du Def- 
fand ill — Growth of London — Sir Joshua Reynolds — 
Change in Manners — Our Climate 124 

CHAPTER VII. 

The American War — Irish Discontent — Want of Money — The 
Houghton Pictures sold — Removal to Berkeley Square— Ill- 
health — A Painting by Zoffani — The Rage for News — 
The Duke of Gloucester — Wilkes — Fashions, Old and New — 
Mackerel News — Pretty Stories — Madame de Se"vigne"'s 
Cabinet — Picture of his Waldegrave Nieces — The Gordon 
Riots — Death of Madame du Deffand — The Blue Stockings 151 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Walpole in his Sixty-fourth Year — The Royal Academy — 
Tonton— Charles Fox — William Pitt — Mrs. Hobart's Sans 
Souci — Improvements at Florence — Walpole's Dancing 
Feats — No Feathers at Court — Highwaymen — Loss of the 
Royal George — Mrs. Siddons — Peace — Its Social Conse- 
quences—The Coalition — The Rivals — Political Excitement 
— The Westminster Election — Political Caricatures — Con- 
way's Retirement — Lady Harrington — Balloons — Illness — 
Recovery i83 



Contents. vii 

CHAPTER IX. 

PAOB 

Lady Correspondents --Madame de Genlis — Miss Burney and 
Hannah More — Deaths of Mrs. Clive and Sir Horace Mann 
— Story of Madame de Choiseul — Richmond — Queensberry 
House — Warren Hastings — Genteel Comedy — St. Swithin 
— Riverside Conceits — Lord North — The Theatre again — 
Gibbon's History — Sheridan — Conway's comedy — A 
Turkish War — Society Newspapers — The Misses Berry — 
Bonner's Ghost — The Arabian Nights — King's College 
Chapel — Richmond Society — New Arrivals — The Berrys' 
visit Italy — A Farewell Letter ... ... 221 

CHAPTER X. 

Walpole's Love of English Scenery — Richmond Hill — Burke 
on the French Revolution — The Berrys at Florence — Death 
of George Selwyn — London Solitude — Repairs at Cliveden 
— Burke and Fox — The Countess of Albany — Journal of a 
Day — Mrs. Hobart's Party — Ancient Trade with India — 
Lady Hamilton — A Boat Race — Return of the Berrys — 
Horace succeeds to the Peerage — Epitaphium Vivi Auctoris 
— His Wives — Mary Berry — Closing Years — Love of Mov- 
ing Objects — Visit from Queen Charlotte — Death of Conway 
— Final Illness of Horace — His last Letter , . . .262 



HORACE WALPOLE AND HIS WORLD., 



CHAPTER I, 

Introduction. — Birth and Parentage. — Education. — Appointments. 
— Travels. — Parliamentary Career. — Retirement. — Fortune. — 
Strawberry Hill. — Collections. — Writings. — Printing Press. — 
Accession to Title. — Death. — Character. — Political Conduct and 
Opinions. — The Slave-Trade. — Strikes. — Views of Literature. — 
Friendships. — Charities. — Chatterton. — Letters. 

We offer to the general reader some specimens of 
Horace Walpole's correspondence. Students of history 
and students of literature are familiar with this great 
mine of facts and fancies, but it is too extensive to be 
fully explored by those who have not both ample leisure 
and strong inclination for such employment. Yet most 
persons, we imagine, would be glad to have some ac- 
quaintance with the prince of English letter-writers. 
Many years have passed since Walter Scott pronounced 
Walpole's letters to be the best in our language, and 
since Lord Byron declared them to be incomparable. 
The fashion in style and composition has changed 
during the interval almost as often as the fashion in 

I 



2 Introduction. 

dress : other candidates, too, for fame in the same depart- 
ment have come forward ; but no one, we think, has 
succeeded in setting aside the verdict given, in the 
early part of our century, by the two most famous 
writers of their time. Meanwhile, to the collections of 
letters by Walpole that were known to Scott and 
Byron have been added several others, no way inferior 
to the first, which have been published at different 
periods ; besides numerous detached letters, which 
have come to light from various quarters. In the 
years 1857-9, appeared a complete edition of Walpole's 
letters in nine large octavo volumes.* The editor of 
this expressed his confidence that no additions of 
moment would afterwards be made to the mass of 
correspondence which his industry had brought together. 
Yet he proved to be mistaken. In 1865 came out Miss 
Berry's Journals and Correspondence, t containing a 
large quantity of letters and parts of letters addressed 
to her and her sister by Walpole, which had not 
previously been given to the world, as well as several 
interesting letters to other persons, the manuscripts of 
which had passed into and remained in Miss Berry's 
possession. Other letters, too, have made their ap- 
pearance, singly and incidentally, in more recent publi- 
cations. $ The total number of Walpole's published 
letters cannot now fall much short of three thousand ; 

* " The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, edited by 
Peter Cunningham." 

j A second edition was published in 1866. 

* E.g., in Jesse's " Memoirs of George III.' 



Birth and Parentage. 3 

the earliest of these is dated in November, 1735,* the 
latest in January, 1797. Throughout the intervening 
sixty years, the writer, to use his own phrase, lived 
always in the big busy world ; and whatever there 
passed before him, his restless fingers, restless even 
when stiffened by the gout, recorded and commented 
on for the amusement of his correspondents and the 
benefit of posterity. The extant results of his dili- 
gence display a full picture of the period, distorted 
indeed in many places by the prejudices of the artist, 
but truthful on the whole, and enlivened everywhere 
by touches of genius. From this mass of narratives 
and descriptions, anecdotes and good-sayings, criti- 
cisms, reflections and raillery, we shall endeavour to 
make as representative a selection as our limits will 
permit. 

It is hardly necessary to say that Horace Walpole 
entered life as the son of the foremost Englishman ol 
his time. He was born on the 24th of September, 1717, 
O.S., and was the youngest of the six children whom 
Sir Robert Walpole's first wife, Catherine Shorter, 
brought to her illustrious husband. This family in- 
cluded two other sons, Robert and Edward, and 
two daughters, besides a fourth son, William, who 
died in infancy. Horace, whose birth took place 

* Or in 1732, if the dates of some letters published in Notes and 
Queries, 4th Series, vol. iii., p. 2, can be trusted. But as the 
second of these letters, the date of which is given as Sep. 18, 1732, 
refers to the death of Walpole's mother, and as we know, from his 
own statement, that Lady Walpole died Aug. 20, 1737, there seems 
\o be an error. 

I — 2 



4 Birth and Parentage. 

eleven years after that of the fifth child, bore no 
resemblance, either in body or mind, to the robust 
and hearty Sir Robert. He was of slight figure 
and feeble constitution ; his features lacked the 
comeliness of the Walpole race ; and his tempera- 
ment was of that fastidious, self-conscious, impression- 
able cast which generally causes a man or boy to be 
called affected. The scandalous, noting these things, 
and comparing the person and character of Horace 
Walpole with those of the Herveys, remembered that 
Sir Robert and his first wife had been estranged from 
one another in the later years of their union, and that 
the lady had been supposed to be intimate with Carr 
Lord Hervey, elder brother of Pope's Sporus. Horace 
himself has mentioned that this Carr was reckoned of 
superior parts to the more known John Lord Hervey, 
but nowhere in our author's writings does it appear that 
the least suspicion of spurious parentage* had entered 
his thoughts. Everywhere he exults in being sprung 
from the great Prime Minister; everywhere he is de- 
voted to the memory of his mother, to whom he raised 
a monument in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription 

* The story that Horace was of Hervey blood was first published 
in some Introductory Anecdotes prefixed to the later editions of 
the works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. These anecdotes were 
contributed by Lady Louisa Stuart, daughter of Lord Bute, the 
Prime Minister, and grand-daughter of Lady Mary. Her statement 
about Walpole, though generally accepted, has perhaps received 
more credit than it deserves, but se non e vero, e ben trovato. The 
similarity, both in matter and composition, between the memoirs 
of Lord Hervey and those of Horace Walpole is certainly remark- 
able- 



Education and Appointments. 5 

from his own pen celebrating her virtue. And in the 
concluding words of this epigraph, he repeated a 
saying, which he has elsewhere recorded, of the poet 
Pope, that Lady Walpole was " untainted by a Court." 

Walpole tells us that, in the first years of his life, 
being an extremely delicate child, he was much indulged 
both by his mother and Sir Robert ; and as an instance 
of this, he relates the well-known story, how his longing 
to see the King was gratified by his mother carrying 
him to St. James's to kiss the hand of George I. just 
before his Majesty began his last journey to Hanover. 
Shortly after this, the boy was sent to Eton, from 
which period we hear no more of Lady Walpole, though 
she survived till August, 1737. In 1735, young Horace 
proceeded from Eton to King's College, Cambridge, 
where he resided, though with long intervals of absence, 
until after he came of age. On quitting the University, 
he was in possession of a handsome income arising 
from the patent place of Usher of the Exchequer, to 
which he had recently been appointed, and which was 
then reckoned worth £900 a year, and from two other 
small patent places in the Exchequer, those of Clerk of 
the Escheats and Controller of the Pipe, producing 
together about £300 a year, which had been held for 
him during his minority. All these offices had been 
procured for him by Sir Robert Walpole, and were 
sinecures, or capable of being executed by deputy. 

Finding himself thus provided for and at leisure, the 
fortunate youth set out on the continental tour which 
was considered indispensable for a man of fashion. 



6 Travels. 

He travelled, as he tells us, at his own expense ; and 
being well able to afford the luxury of a companion, he 
took with him Thomas Gray the poet, who had been 
his associate at Eton and Cambridge. The pair 
visited together various parts of France and Italy, 
making a stay of some duration at several places. 
After a few weeks spent in Paris, they settled at 
Rheims for three months to study French. They 
lived here with their former school-mate, Henry 
Seymour Conway,* Walpole's maternal cousin ; and 
here appears to have been cemented the lifelong friend- 
ship between Conway and Walpole which forms 
perhaps the most honourable feature in the history of 
the latter. At Florence, Walpole resided for more than 
twelve months in the house of Horace Mann, British 
Envoy to the Court of Tuscany, with whom he formed 
an intimacy, which was maintained, from the time of 
his leaving Italy until the death of Mann forty-five 
years after, by correspondence only, without the parties 
ever meeting again. Gray remained with Walpole at 
Florence, and accompanied him in visits which he 
made thence to Rome, Naples, and other places ; but 

e Born in July, 1719. He was second son of the first Lord 
Conway by his third wife, Charlotte Shorter, sister of Lady Wal- 
pole. He was Secretary in Ireland during the vice-royalty of 
William, fourth Duke of Devonshire ; then Groom of the Bed- 
chamber to George II. and to George III. ; became Secretary of 
State in 1765 ; Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance in 1770 ; 
Commander-in-Chief in 1782 ; and was created a Field-Marshal in 
1793. He married the Dowager Countess of Aylesbury, by whom 
he had an only child, Mrs. Darner, the sculptor, to whom Walpol • 
left Strawberry Hill. 



Parliamentary Career. J 

at Reggio a dissension arose between thein, and they 
parted to return home by different routes. Walpole 
subsequently took the blame of this dispute upon him- 
self. " It arose," he says, " from Gray being too serious 
a companion. Gray was for antiquities, I was for per- 
petual balls and plays ; the fault was mine." According 
to another account, Walpole had opened a letter ad- 
dressed to Gray. Whatever was the cause of the 
breach, it was repaired three years later, and during 
the rest of the poet's life he continued on friendly 
terms with his early companion. 

Walpole reached England in September, 1741, just 
before the meeting of a new Parliament, and at the 
commencement of the Session took his seat as member 
for Callington, in Cornwall, for which place he had 
been elected during his absence. Sir Robert's Govern- 
ment was at that time in the midst of the difficulties 
which soon afterwards caused its downfall. In February, 
1742, the defeated Minister resigned, and was created 
Earl of Orford. Horace, as was to be expected, took 
no prominent part in the struggle. His maiden speech 
was delivered in March, 1742, on a motion for an inquiry 
into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole during the last 
ten years of his administration. The young orator was 
received with favour by the House, and obtained a com- 
pliment from the great William Pitt ; but the success of 
his effort, which is preserved in one of his letters to 
Mann, must be attributed entirely to the circumstances 
under which it was uttered. It does not appear that he 
afterwards acquired any reputation in debate. Indeed, 



8 Parliamentary Career. 

he was generally content to be a listener. That he 
was a constant attendant at the House, his correspon- 
dence sufficiently proves, but he rarely took an active 
part in its proceedings. He has recorded a dispute he 
had with Speaker Onslow in his second Parliament. 
In 175 1 he moved the address to the King at the open- 
ing of the Session, and five years later we find him 
speaking on a question of employing Swiss troops in 
the Colonies. In 1757 he exerted himself with much zeal 
in favour of the unfortunate Admiral Byng. This, how- 
ever, was by argument and solicitation outside the 
House. In like manner, some years afterwards, he 
made strenuous, though vain, endeavours, at the con- 
ferences of his party, to persuade them not to support 
the exclusion of the King's mother from the Regency 
which was provided for on the first serious illness of 
George III. 

These are the chief incidents of Walpole's public 
career, although he remained in the House of Commons 
for twenty-seven years. At the General Election of 
1754 he was chosen for the family borough of Castle 
Rising in Norfolk, but vacated this seat soon after- 
wards in order to be a candidate for the town of King's 
Lynn, which had for many years returned his father to 
Parliament. Horace continued to represent Lynn 
until the Dissolution of 1768, when he took leave of his 
constituents, and was no longer seen in Westminster 
Hall. Perhaps the final reason for his retirement was 
the failure of his friend Conway to retain a foremost 
position in politics. After serving as Secretary of State 



Retirement, 9 

an J Leader of the House of Commons under three suc- 
cessive Premiers, Conway, through feebleness of purpose, 
lost his hold upon office, and fell for some years into the 
background. But with disappointment for his friend, 
there must have mingled in Walpole's mind a feeling of 
dissatisfaction with himself. Few men acquire much 
weight in Parliament who do not at least occasionally 
take a share in its discussions ; and Horace had more 
than once found that his influence in the House was by 
no means proportioned to his general reputation for 
ability. He was therefore quite ready to withdraw when 
Conway could no longer profit by his vote. Though at 
all times a keen politician, and extremely social in his 
habits, he was unfitted by nature for the conflicts of the 
Parliamentary arena. Desultory skirmishing with the 
pen was more to his taste than the close fighting of 
debate. During more than half his life, the war of 
parties was largely carried on by anonymous pamphlets, 
and Walpole gave powerful help in this way to his 
side ; afterwards, when letters and articles in news- 
papers took the place of pamphlets, he became an 
occasional contributor to the public journals. 

But Walpole found in art and literature the chief 
employment of his serious hours. His reading was ex- 
tensive, the most solid portion of it being in the regions 
of history and archaeology. More engrossing than his 
love of books was his passion for collecting and 
imitating antiquities and curiosities of all kinds. His 
ample fortune furnished him with the means of in- 
dulging these expensive pursuits. The emoluments 



io Fortune. 

of the Usher of the Exchequer greatly increased during 
his tenure of that post : in time of war — and England 
was often at war in those days — they were sometimes 
very large. Walpole admits that in one year he received 
as much as £4,200 from this source ; and the Commis- 
sioners of Accounts in 1782 thought that the annual 
value of the place might fairly be stated at that sum. 
There was an antique flavour about these gains which 
gave Walpole almost as much pleasure as the money 
itself. The duties of the Usher were to shut the gates 
of the Exchequer, and to provide the Exchequer and 
Treasury with the paper, parchment, pens, ink, sand, 
wax, tape, and other articles of a similar nature used in 
those departments. The latter of these duties, which was 
said to be as old as the reign of Edward III. at least, 
formed the lucrative part of the Usher's employment, 
as he was allowed large profits on the goods he thus 
purveyed to the Crown. Obviously the income of such 
an office, while varying with the financial business of 
each year, must have steadily advanced on the whole 
with the progress of the nation. Besides this place, 
and the two other patent places before mentioned, in 
all of which he continued until his death, Walpole 
enjoyed for many years a principal share in the income 
of the Collectorship of the Customs. Sir Robert 
Walpole held the last appointment under a patent 
which entitled him to dispose as he pleased of the 
reversion during the lives of his two eldest sons, Robert 
and Edward. Accordingly, he appointed that, after his 
death, £1,000 a year of the income should be paid to 



Fortune. 1 1 

his youngest son Horace during the subsistence of the 
patent, and that the remainder should be divided 
equally between Horace and Edward. By this arrange- 
ment, Horace at the age of twenty-seven — for his father 
died in March, 1745 — stepped into another income of 
about £1,400 a year, which lasted until the death of his 
brother Sir Edward Walpole in 1784. In his writings he 
speaks, with becoming gratitude, of the places and emo- 
luments bestowed on him by his father as being a noble 
provision for a third son. Having thus nobly provided 
at the public expense for a child who had not yet shown 
any merit or capacity, Sir Robert did not find it need- 
ful to do much for him out of his private property. By 
his will, he bequeathed Horace only a sum of £5,000 
charged on his Norfolk estate, and a leasehold house in 
Arlington Street. The greater part of the legacy re- 
mained unpaid for forty years ; the house Horace occu- 
pied until the term expired in 1781, when he bought a 
residence in Berkeley Square. As Walpole was never 
married, it is not surprising that he died worth ninety- 
one thousand pounds in the funds, besides other pro- 
perty, including his town house just mentioned, and his 
villa at Twickenham with its collection of pictures and 
other works of art. 

The fantastic little pile of buildings which he raised on 
the margin of the Thames engaged his chief attention 
for many years. He purchased the site of this in 1748, 
there being nothing then on the land but a cottage, and 
called it Strawberry Hill, a name which he found in one 
of the title-deeds. He had taken a lease the year 



12 Strawberry Hill. 

before of the cottage, with part of the land, from Mrs. 
Chenevix, a fashionable toy-dealer, and thus describes 
his acquisition in a letter to Conway : " It is a little 
plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, 
and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in 
enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges : 

'"A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled, 
And little finches wave their wings in gold." 

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply 
me continually with coaches and chaises : barges as 
solemn as Barons of the Exchequer move under my 
window; Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my 
prospect ; but thank God ! the Thames is between me 
and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty 
as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just 
now skimming under my window by a most poetical 
moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a 
farm as Noah's, when he set up in the Ark with a pair 
of each kind ; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I 
believe his was after they had been cooped up together 
forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for 
themselves : up two pair of stairs is what they call 
Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one 
shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope 
without any glasses. Lord John Sackville predeceased 
me here, and instituted certain games called cricketalia, 
which have been celebrated this very evening in honour 
of him in a neighbouring meadow." 

Having completed his purchase, Walpole proceeded 
to make improvements. His antiquarian studies 



Strawberry Hill. 13 

had inspired him with a fondness for Gothic archi- 
tecture. But his zeal was not according to much 
knowledge, nor guided by a very pure taste. Gra- 
dually the little cottage became merged in a strange 
nondescript edifice, half castle, half cloister, with all 
kinds of grotesque decorations. "The Castle," so 
Walpole called it, " was," he tells us, " not entirely 
built from the ground, but formed at different times, by 
alterations of, and additions to, the old small house. The 
Library and Refectory, or Great Parlour, was entirely 
new-built in 1753 ; the Gallery, Round Tower, Great 
Cloister, and Cabinet, in 1760 and 1761 ; the Great 
North Bed-chamber in 1770; and the Beauclerk Tower 
with the Hexagon Closet in 1776." In a small cloister, 
outside the house, stood the blue and white china 
bowl, commemorated by Gray, in which Walpole's cat 
was drowned. On the staircase was the famous armour 
of Francis I. In the Gallery, among many other trea- 
sures, were placed the Roman eagle and the bust of 
Vespasian, so often mentioned in their owner's corres- 
pondence. The buildings were no more substantial 
in structure than they were correct in style. Much 
cheap ridicule has been poured upon "the Castle," 
as " a most trumpery piece of ginger-bread Gothic," 
with "pie-crust battlements," and "pinnacles of 
lath and plaster." Many of its faults and absur- 
dities must injustice be referred to the novelty of the 
attempt to apply a disused style to the requirements 
of a modern domestic residence. Walpole him- 
self was by no means blind to the flimsiness and 



1 4 Collections. 

incongruities of his creation. He was rather indignant, 
indeed, when a French visitor censured it as " non 
digne de la solidite Anglaise ;" but in his own descrip- 
tion of it he calls it " a paper fabric," and speaks of 
the house and its decorations as " a mixture which 
may be denominated, in some words of Pope : 
' A Gothic Vatican of Greece and Rome.' " 

With the help of Mr. Essex, who assisted him in de- 
signing the later portions, he gradually learned the 
depth of the architectural ignorance in which he and 
the " Committee," who were his first advisers, had been 
involved at the commencement of his work. In short, 
Strawberry Hill, child's baby-house as it was, proved 
the first step in the renascence of Gothic art. 

As chamber after chamber was added to the Castle, 
it became Walpole's next care to fill them with fresh 
antiques in furniture, pictures, bronzes, armour, painted 
glass, and other like articles. "In his villa," says Lord 
Macaulay, " every apartment is a museum, every piece 
of furniture is a curiosity; there is something strange in 
the form of the shovel ; there is a long story belonging 
to the bell-rope. We wander among a profusion of 
rarities, of trifling intrinsic value, but so quaint in 
fashion, or connected with such remarkable names and 
events, that they may well detain our attention for a 
moment. A moment is enough. Some new relic, some 
new unique, some new carved work, some new enamel, 
is forthcoming in an instant. One cabinet of trinkets 
is no sooner closed than another is opened." 

Of Walpole's writings other than his letters, we df 



Writings. 1 5 

not propose to offer any detailed account or criticism. 
His earliest work, "iEdes Walpolianse," was published 
as early as 1747; it was merely a description of his 
father's pictures at Houghton Hall, the family seat in 
Norfolk. Among his next efforts were some papers 
contributed in 1753 and following years to a periodical 
work of the day, called The World * Most persons 
have read the " Castle of Otranto," so warmly ap- 
plauded by the author of " Ivanhoe." Most students 
of art, we suppose, are acquainted with Walpole's 
" Anecdotes of Painting," and his " Catalogue of 
Engravers." His " Catalogue of Noble and Royal 
Authors," though abounding in agreeable anecdotes, is 
probably now consulted by few ; and his " Historic 
Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III.," acute 
and ingenious as it was, cannot detain anyone who is 
aware of the recent researches on the same subject. 
His " Reminiscences of the Courts of George I. and 
George II.," and his "Memoirs" and "Journals" 
relating to the reigns of George II. and George III., 
are, and must ever remain, among the most valuable 
historical documents of the eighteenth century. The 
Reminiscences were written for the amusement of the 
Misses Berry, and have been extolled with justice as 
being, both in manner and matter, the very perfection 

* One of his papers in The World contains an account of an 
escape which he had, in 1749, of being shot by highwaymen in 
Hyde Park. His face was grazed by a ball from the pistol of one 
of his assailants, which went off accidentally before aim had been 
taken. An allusion to this adventure will be found in one of our 
extracts. 



1 6 Accession to Title. 

of anecdote writing. The rest of Walpole's works, 
including his tragedy of " The Mysterious Mother " — 
the merits of which, whatever they may be, are 
cancelled by the atrocity of the fable — are as nearly 
as possible forgotten. 

Not content with writing and collecting books, Horace 
in 1757 established a printing press in the grounds of 
Strawberry Hill. The first printer employed by him 
was William Robinson; the last, Thomas Kirgate, 
whose name will often be found in the following ex- 
tracts. The first work printed at this press was Gray's 
"Odes," with Bentley's Illustrations. Its other pro- 
ductions include Walpole's own Royal and Noble 
Authors, Anecdotes of Painting, Engravers, and Tragedy; 
his " Description of Strawberry Hill," and " Fugitive 
Pieces ;" besides several works by other authors, such 
as Bentley's " Lucan," Lord Herbert's Life, a trans- 
lation of Hentzner's "Travels," and Lord Whitworth's 
"Account of Russia;" as well as small collections of 
verses by sundry friends. These " Strawberry Hill " 
editions are now scarce, and command high prices. 

The rest of our author's career may be summed up 
in a few words. His eldest brother had died early, and 
had been succeeded by an only son, whose profligacy 
and occasional fits of insanity caused much trouble. 
In December, 1791, when seventy-four years of age, 
Horace became, by the death of this nephew, Earl of 
Orford, which made little addition to his income, the 
family estate being heavily incumbered. The in- 
heritance was far from welcome. In a letter to a 



Death and Ckai'acter. 17 

friend, he says he does not understand the management 
of such an estate, and is too old to learn. "A source 
of lawsuits among my near relations, endless conversa- 
tions with lawyers, and packets of letters to read every 
day and answer — all this weight of new business is too 
much for the rag of life that yet hangs about me.* He 
never took his seat in the House of Lords. He lived 
for upwards of five years longer, in the full possession 
of all his faculties, though suffering great bodily infirmity 
from the effects of gout, to which he was long a martyr. 
He died at his house, No. 11, Berkeley Square, on the 
2nd of March, 1797, in his eightieth year, and was 
buried at the family seat of Houghton. With him the 
male line of Sir Robert Walpole and the title of Orford 
became extinct. The estate of Houghton descended 
to the fourth Earl of Cholmondeley, grandson of 
Horace Walpole's younger sister Mary, who married 
the third earl of that ilk. Strawberry Hill was at its 
founder's absolute disposal, and he left it, as already 
mentioned, to Mrs. Darner, Conway's daughter, but 
for life only, with limitations over in strict settlement. 

" It is somewhat curious," says his biographer, " as 
a proof of the inconsistency of the human mind, that, 
having built his Castle with so little view to durability, 
Walpole entailed the perishable possession with a 
degree of strictness which would have been more fit- 
ting for a baronial estate. And that, too, after having 
written a fable entitled ' The Entail,' in consequence of 
some one having asked him whether he did not intend 

* Letter to John Pinkerton, Dec. 26, 1791. 

2 



1 8 Political Conduct and Opinions. 

to entail Strawberry Hill, and in ridicule of such a pro- 
ceeding." 

Inconsistency, caprice, eccentricity, affectation, are 
faults which have been freely charged against the 
character of Horace Walpole. His strong prejudices 
and antipathies, his pride of rank, his propensity to 
satire, even his sensitive temperament, made him many 
enemies, who not only exaggerated his failings, but 
succeeded, in some instances at least, in transmitting 
their personal resentments to men of the present 
century. 

As a politician, especially, Walpole has received 
rather hard measure from the partisan critics on both 
sides. A generation back, Whig Reviewers and Tory 
Reviewers vied with each other in defaming his memory. 
Macaulay and Croker, who seldom agreed in anything, 
were of one accord in this. To Croker, of course, 
Horace was just a place-holder who furnished a telling 
example of Whig jobbery. To rake up all the details of 
his places in the Exchequer, and his " rider," or charge, 
on the place in the Customs, to compute and exaggerate 
his gains from each of these sources, to track him in 
dark intrigues for extending his tenure of one appoint- 
ment and bettering his position in another; all this was 
congenial employment for the Rigby of the nineteenth 
century, as it would have been for his prototype in the 
eighteenth. The motive of Macaulay's deadly attack 
is not quite so obvious. Walpole's politics were those 
of his father and of the old Whigs generally. While 
in theory inclined to Republicanism — though he was 



Political Conduct and Opinions 19 

never, as he tells us, quite a Republican* — it was his 
habit, on practical questions, to consider what course 
the great Sir Robert would have taken under similar 
circumstances. There seems nothing in all this to 
excite the wrath of the most atrabilious Liberal. The 
truth appears to be that, in the Whig circles of 
Macaulay's time, there existed a traditional grudge 
against Horace Walpole. In the " Memorials of Charles 
James Fox," which were arranged by Lord Vassall- 
Holland, and edited by Lord John Russell, both the 
noble commentators speak of Horace in terms of undis- 
guised bitterness. Nor is the cause very far to seek. In 
politics, Conway was under the dominion of Walpole ; 
and Conway, on more than one critical occasion, dis- 
obliged the Rockingham faction, from which the modern 
Whigs deduce their origin. " Conway," says Lord 
John Russell, writing of the events of 1766, " had been 
made Secretary of State by Lord Rockingham, and 
ought to have resigned when Lord Rockingham left 
office ; but Mr. Walpole did not choose that this should 
be so." Sixteen years later, Conway sat again in a 
Cabinet presided over by Lord Rockingham, and when 
that nobleman died, he again refused to resign. It will 
be remembered that, on this occasion, the Cavendishes 
and Fox quitted their places when the Treasury was 
given to Lord Shelburne, instead of their own nominee, 
the Duke of Portland, whose only recommendations 
were that he was Lord of Welbeck, and had married a 
daughter of the House of Devonshire. 

" I have been called a Republican ; I never was quite that." — 
Walpole to Lady Ossory, July 7, 1782. 

a — 2 



20 Political Conduct and Opinions. 

In 1782, the Duke of Richmond, Conway's son-in-law, 
concurred with Conway in declining to desert the new 
Premier ; and we know that Walpole stoutly supported, 
if he did not dictate, the joint resolution of his two 
friends. Lord Holland tells us that Fox did not like 
Walpole at all, and accounts for this dislike by sug- 
gesting that his uncle may have imbibed some pre- 
judice against Walpole for unkindness shown to the 
first Lord Holland. But this seems going needlessly far 
back for an explanation. There can be no doubt that 
Fox looked on Walpole as having assisted to thwart 
his design of governing England in the name of the 
insignificant Duke of Portland, and detested him ac- 
cordingly. Nor did subsequent events tend to soften 
Fox's recollection of this passage in his life, or of the 
persons concerned in it. Had he overcome his jealousy 
of Lord Shelburne, or had he succeeded in compelling 
his rival to bow before the "wooden idol" — so Lord 
John Russell himself calls Portland — which he had set 
up, he would probably, in either case, have avoided 
the ill-famed coalition with Lord North, which was the 
main cause of his long-continued exclusion from power. 
Walpole had spoken his mind very plainly on the 
subject. "It is very entertaining," he wrote, "that 
two or three great families should persuade themselves 
that they have an hereditary and exclusive right of 
giving us a head without a tongue."* And he told 
Fox himself: " My Whiggism is not confined to the 
Peak of Derbyshire. "t We can imagine with what 

* Letter to Mann, July 10, 1782. 

t Letter to Lady Ossory, July 7, 1782. 



Political Conduct and Opinions. 21 

horror such utterances as these were received by the 
believers in the Whig doctrine of divine right. No 
wonder that Mr. Fox did not like Walpole. And what 
Mr. Fox disliked was, of course, anathema to every 
true Whig, and especially to an Edinburgh Reviewer 
of 1833. 

What do the complaints of Walpole's political 
tergiversation amount to ? It was certainly not a wise 
act of Horace to hang up in his bedroom an engraving 
of the death warrant of Charles I. with the inscription 
" Major Charta." But the Whig essayist, while 
reproving Walpole's strange fancy that, without the 
instrument in question, the Great Charter would have 
become of little importance, might have recollected 
that he had himself professed his inability to see any 
essential distinction between the execution of the 
Royal Martyr and the deposition of his son. Again, 
there was inconsistency, no doubt, between Walpole's 
admiration of the Long Parliament, and his detes- 
tation of the National Assembly ; yet it should be 
borne in mind that, in the midst of his disgust at the 
excesses of the French Revolution, he protested that 
he was very far from subscribing to the whole of 
Burke's " Reflections." Why then should we be told 
that " he was frightened into a fanatical royalist, and 
became one of the most extravagant alarmists of those 
wretched times?" We may surely ask on his behalf 
the question which Macaulay put when the consistency 
of his own master, Sir James Mackintosh, was impugned : 
" Why is one person to be singled out from among 



22 Political Opinions. 

millions, and arraigned before posterity as a traitor to 
his opinions, only because events produced on him the 
effect which they produced on a whole generation ?" 

When the critic tells us that Walpole was a mischief- 
maker who " sometimes contrived, without showing 
himself, to disturb the course of Ministerial negotia- 
tions, and to spread confusion through the political 
circles," we cannot avoid seeing in these words a 
resentful reference to the part taken by Conway on 
the occasions above referred to. 

It was not Walpole's fault that the party conflicts of 
his time were mainly about persons. We have seen 
the importance which Fox attached to these personal 
questions. We may safely say that this great man's 
disapproval of Walpole's conduct did not spring from 
any difference on matters of principle. If Horace was 
an opponent of Parliamentary Reform, this was an 
open question among Fox's most intimate associates. 
If he objected to the enfranchisement of the Roman 
Catholics, most Whigs of his time did the same. In 
the dispute with America, as we shall see, he main- 
tained, from the first, the right of the Colonies to 
liberty and independence. Nor did he retract his 
expressions of sympathy with the American Republic 
when the horrors of the French Revolution made him 
a supporter of Tory policy in England and on the Con- 
tinent. He always lamented as one of the worst 
effects of the French excesses that they must neces- 
sarily retard the progress and establishment of civil 

liberty.* 

* Miss Berry. 



The Slave Trade. 23 

There were questions of social politics on which he 
was far in advance of his times. " We have been 
sitting," he wrote, on the 25th of February, 1750, 
" this fortnight on the African Company. We, the 
British Senate, that temple of liberty, and bulwark of 
Protestant Christianity, have, this fortnight, been con- 
sidering methods to make more effectual that horrid 
traffic of selling negroes. It has appeared to us that 
six-and-forty thousand of these wretches are sold every 
year to our plantations alone ! It chills one's blood — I 
would not have to say I voted for it for the Continent 
of America ! The destruction of the miserable in- 
habitants by the Spaniards was but a momentary 
misfortune that followed from the discovery of the New 
World, compared with the lasting havoc which it 
brought upon Africa. We reproach Spain, and yet do 
not even pretend the nonsense of butchering these poor 
creatures for the good of their souls."* The sentiments 
thus declared by Walpole nine years before Wilberforce 
was born, he steadily adhered to through life. On this 
point, at least, no one has ever charged him with any 
wavering or inconsistency. 

W 7 e will mention, before passing on to different 
topics, one other matter on which Walpole shows a 
liberality of feeling quite unusual at any period of his 
life. In the summer of 1762, he writes : ' I am in dis- 
tress about my Gallery and Cabinet : the latter was on 
the point of being completed, and is really striking 
beyond description. Last Saturday night my work- 

* Letter to Sir Horace Mann. 



24 Views of Literature. 

men took their leave, made their bow, and left me up 
to the knees in shavings. In short, the journeymen 
carpenters, like the cabinet-makers, have entered into 
an association not to work unless their wages are 
raised ; and how can one complain ? The poor fellows, 
whose all the labour is, see their masters advance their 
prices every day, and think it reasonable to touch their 
share."* 

In the domain of literature, Walpole's opinions were 
largely influenced by his social position and personal 
connexions. He rated the class of professional writers 
as much below as they have ever been rated above 
their real deserts ; and this may perhaps help to explain 
the rancour with which he has been pursued by some 
critics. He could see nothing wonderful in the art of 
stringing sentences together. He met famous authors 
daily in society, and did not find that they were wiser 
or more accomplished than their neighbours. Most of 
them showed to little advantage in the drawing-rooms 
in which he felt his own life completest. Gray seldom 
opened his lips; Goldsmith "talked like poor poll"; 
Johnson was Ursa Major — a brute with whom Horace 
declined to be acquainted ; Hume's powers of mind did 
not appear in his broad unmeaning face, nor animate 
his awkward conversation ; even Gibbon made a bad 
figure as often as any doubt was hinted as to the trans- 
cendent importance of his luminous or voluminous 
history. As for the novelists, neither Fielding nor 
Richardson ever ascended to the sublime heights in 
* Letter to Sir Horace Mann, July i, 1762. 



Views of Literature. 25 

which Horace dwelt at ease. Stories circulated there 
of vulgar orgies amidst which the biographer of Tom 
Jones performed his police functions, and of requests 
made by the author of " Clarissa " to his female 
admirers for information as to the manners of polite 
life. Walpole shrank from the coarseness of the one, 
and smiled at the attempts of the other to describe a 
sphere which he had never entered. We are not to 
suppose, however, that Horace was as blind to the 
gradations of literary rank as some would have us be- 
lieve. When he told Mann that The World was the 
work of "our first writers," instancing Lord Chester- 
field, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and other well-born 
dilettanti whose names have now sunk into oblivion 
or neglect, it is clear that he was speaking with refer- 
ence to the matter in hand. It did not occur to him 
that great historians and poets would be likely or 
suitable contributors to a series of light papers intended 
for the macaronis of the hour. What he regarded as 
the chief qualification of himself and his friends who 
wrote for this fashionable journal was their familiarity 
with the tone of the best society. For himself, Wal- 
pole constantly disclaimed all pretence to learning or 
exact knowledge of any kind, and, due allowance made 
for the vanity of which undoubtedly he owned an 
ample share, there seems no reason to question his 
sincerity. We conceive, indeed, that his estimate of 
his own talents and acquirements was much more 
accurate than it has usually been considered. In all 
that related to literary fame, his vanity showed itself 



26 Views of Literature. 

rather in depreciating the advantages which he had not, 
than in exalting those which he possessed. If he did 
not worship style, still less was he disposed to bow 
down before study and research. Hence the low 
esteem in which he held authors of all kinds. Some 
excuses may be made for his disparaging criticisms. 
The literati of his day were certainly eclipsed by the 
contemporary orators. What writer was left in prose 
or verse, on the death of Swift, who could compare with 
Mansfield or the first William Pitt? Which of the 
poets or historians of the next generation won the 
applause which was called forth by the speeches of Fox 
or Sheridan or the younger Pitt ? If Fox and Sheridan 
could obtain their greatest triumphs in the midst of 
gambling and dissipation, and apparently without pains 
or application, there was some apology for slighting the 
labours of Robertson and the carefully polished verses 
of Goldsmith. With the exception of Lord Chatham, 
whom he strongly disliked, Walpole generally does 
justice to the great speakers of his time, on whichever 
side in politics they were ranged ; if he gives no credit 
for genius to the writers of the age, this was partly at 
least because their genius was of no striking or signal 
order. Judgment, sense, and spirit were Pope's three 
marks for distinguishing a great writer from an inferior 
one, and these continued to be the criteria applicable, 
even in the department of so-called works of imagina- 
tion, down to the end of the century. 

Walpole, as in duty bound, was a professed worshipper 
of Shakespeare and Milton, but we suspect that his 



Friendships. 2 7 

worship was not very hearty. It is clear that Pope 
was the poet of his choice ; and he seems to have 
known every line of his favourite by heart. He ad- 
mired also the exquisite poetry of Gray, and this 
admiration was no doubt sincere; but we are dis- 
posed to think that it arose entirely from the early 
connexion between Horace and the author, and from the 
feeling that Gray, in some sort, belonged to him. Gray 
was Walpole's poet, as Conway was his statesman ; 
and the sense of ownership, which converted his 
cousinly regard for Conway into a species of idolatry, 
turned to enthusiasm for Gray's " Odes " the critical 
estimate which would otherwise, we feel sure, have 
ended in a pretty strong aversion. 

What Walpole said, rather uncharitably, of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, may, we fear, be applied with more 
justice to Walpole himself. All his geese were swans, 
as the swans of others were geese in his eyes. Conway 
was a man of integrity and honour, an excellent soldier, 
a fluent speaker, but he was a timid and vacillating 
politician. That phase of their weakness which makes 
the vainglorious pique themselves on having remark- 
able friends, is certainly not unamiable, though it is 
sometimes fatiguing. We all know the man who con- 
gratulates himself on his good fortune in being the 
associate of the versatile Dr. A., the high-souled Mr. 
B., the original Mr. C, and so on. Had Horace 
possessed a wife, he would have wearied all his 
acquaintance with encomiums on her beauty, wit, wis- 
dom, and other matchless perfections. Having no wife 



28 Friendships. 

to celebrate, he chose to sing the praises of General 
Conway, and sang them lustily, and with good 
courage. This was the more disinterested, as Conway 
appears to have been distinctly one of those persons 
who allow themselves to be loved. There is no 
questioning the genuineness of a devotion which un- 
doubtedly entailed on Walpole great sacrifices. The 
time and labour which Horace bestowed in the service 
of his friend's ambition entitle him to full credit for 
honesty in the offer which he made to share his fortune 
with the latter, when, at an early stage of his career, 
he was dismissed from his employments for opposing 
the Ministry of the day. 

This was not the only occasion on which Walpole 
showed himself capable of uncommon generosity. He 
made a similar offer to Madame du Deffand, when she 
was threatened with the loss of her pension. That 
clever leader of French society was not, like Conway, 
a connexion of long standing, but a mere recent 
acquaintance of Horace, who had no claim on him 
beyond the pleasure she had shown in his company, 
and the pity which her blind and helpless old age de- 
manded. In the event, the lady did not require his 
assistance, but her letters prove that she had full con- 
fidence in his intentions, notwithstanding the harshness 
with which he sometimes repressed her expressions of 
affection. The same temperament which made him 
fond of displaying his intimacy with Conway, caused 
him to dread the ridicule of being supposed to have an 
attachment for the poor old Marquise. Hence arose 



Charities. 29 

the occasional semblance of unkindness, which was 
contradicted by substantial proofs of regard, and 
which must be set down to undue sensitiveness on the 
gentleman's side rather than to want of consideration. 

The coldness of heart with which Walpole is 
reproached has, we think, been exaggerated. "His 
affections were bestowed on few; for in early life they 
had never been cultivated." So much is admitted by 
Miss Berry, a most favourable witness. But in society 
generally, Horace appears to have shown himself 
friendly and obliging. His aristocratic pride did not 
prevent him from mixing freely with persons much his 
inferiors in station. Miss Hawkins, daughter of the 
historian of music, who for many years lived near him 
at Twickenham, testifies to his sociable and liberal 
temper ; and Walpole's own letters show that he was 
at some trouble to assist Sir John Hawkins in col- 
lecting materials for his work. The correspondence 
between Horace and his deputies in the Exchequer 
proves the kindly feeling that subsisted between him 
and them ; and also reveals the fact that he employed 
them from time to time in dispensing charities which 
he did not wish to have disclosed. And Miss Berry 
records that, during his later life, although no ostenta- 
tious contributor to public charities and schemes of 
improvement, the friends in whose opinion he could 
confide had always more difficulty to repress than to 
excite his liberality. 

His temper, says Sir Walter Scott, was precarious. 
Walpole, we believe, would readily have pleaded guilty 



3<d Chatterton. 

to this charge. That he felt his infirmity in this respect 
his Letters sufficiently show ; he assigns it as the chief 
reason why he preferred to live alone. Gra3' was not 
the only one of his early friends with whom he 
quarrelled. He became estranged at different times 
from Ashton, another college companion ; from Bentley, 
whose taste and talent he had employed in decorating 
his Castle ; from George Montagu,* who, next to 
Conway, was long his most intimate friend ; and from 
Mason the poet; not to mention other names. What- 
ever blame may attach to Walpole for these ruptures, 
it seems to be now pretty well agreed that in the 
matter of Chatterton he was guiltless. On this sub- 
ject, we need only quote a few sentences from Scott. 
" His memory," says Sir Walter, " has suffered most on 
account of his conduct towards Chatterton, in which 
we have always thought he was perfectly defensible. 
That unhappy son of genius endeavoured to impose 
upon Walpole a few stanzas of very inferior merit, as 
ancient ; and sent him an equally gross and palpable 
imposture under the shape of a pretended ' List of 
Painters.' Walpole's sole crime lies in not patronizing 
at once a young man who only appeared before him 
in the character of a very inartificial impostor, though 
he afterwards proved himself a gigantic one. The 
fate of Chatterton lies, not at the door of Walpole, but 

* Son of Brigadier-General Edward Montagu, and nephew to 
the second Earl of Halifax. He was member of Parliament for 
Northampton, usher of the Black Rod in Ireland during the lieu- 
tenancy of the Earl of Halifax, ranger of Salsey Forest, and private 
secretary to Lord North when Chancellor of the Exchequer. 



Walpole s Letters. 31 

of the public at large, who two years, we believe, after- 
wards were possessed of the splendid proofs of his 
natural powers, and any one of whom was as much 
called upon as Walpole to prevent the most unhappy 
catastrophe."* 

We turn from Walpole's life and character to his 
Letters. We have already mentioned the friends to 
whom the earlier portion of these were chiefly ad- 
dressed. Other friends to whom he occasionally 
wrote were Lord Hertford, Conway's elder brother, 
Lord Strafford, Cole, the antiquary of Cambridge, 
and John Chute, with whom he had been intimate at 
Florence. The names of some later correspondents will 
appear as we proceed, of whom such an account as 
may seem necessary will be given as they come before 
us. Of the pains and skill with which the matter of 
each letter is adapted to the person for whom it was 
intended, our readers will be able to judge for them- 
selves. That the author had studied letter-writing as 
an art, is a remark almost too trivial to be repeated. 
It is hardly too much to say that he made it his chief 
literary business. " Mine," he said, " is a life of letter- 
writing." That he counted on being remembered by 
his letters far more than by any other of his writings, 
we hold to be as certain as any statement of the kind 

* Had Chatterton appealed simply to Walpole's charity, he 
would not have been rejected. This was the opinion of those who 
knew Horace best. But, apart from the imposture sought to be 
palmed on him, Walpole did not profess to be a patron of litera- 
ture or the arts. An artist has pencils, he would say, and an 
author has pens, and the public must reward them as it sees fit. 



32 Walpoles Letters. 

can be. He had, we believe, gauged his powers 
far more correctly than is commonly supposed, and 
was satisfied that in this kind of composition, more 
than in any other, he had produced something of per- 
manent value. He had studied closely the letters of 
Gray and Madame de Sevigne, and formed his own 
style from them. The letters of the latter were his 
especial delight. He read them over until they became 
part of his own mind. Nothing interested him so 
much as a rumour that some fresh letters of " Notre 
Dame des Rochers " had been discovered. It may be 
too much to say, as Miss Berry has said, that Walpole 
has shown our language to be capable of all the graces 
and all the charms of the French of the great writer 
whom he imitated. But, due allowance made for the 
superiority of French idiom and French finesse in a 
department where they appear to most advantage, 
it may safely be affirmed that, if variety and interest of 
topics be regarded as well as style, Walpole's letters 
are unrivalled. It was only by degrees that Horace 
attained to the perfection of easy engaging writing. 
His earlier letters betray signs of considerable labour. 
It is said that a summary prepared beforehand of one 
of his letters to Montagu was found in looking over 
some of his correspondence. In later days he wrote 
with the greatest facility, even carrying on a conver- 
sation the while. But he continued to the last the 
habit of putting down on the backs of letters or slips 
of paper, a note of facts, of news, of witticisms, or of 
anything he wished not to forget for the amusement of 
his correspondents. 



Country Life. 33 



CHAPTER II. 

Country Life. — Ranelagh Gardens. — The Rebel Lords. — The 
Earthquake. — A Frolic at Vauxhall. — Capture of a House- 
breaker. — Strawberry Hill. — The Beautiful Gunnings. — Sterne. 

We pass over such of Walpole's letters as were written 
before his return from his travels. They are interesting 
chiefly as parts of a correspondence carried on by four 
young men of talent — Gray, West, Ashton, and Horace 
himself — who, having been schoolfellows, had formed 
what they called a quadruple alliance ; and it must be 
owned that Walpole in this correspondence shines less 
than Gray, who appears to have been the mentor of the 
group, and less, too, perhaps than West, whose early 
death disappointed great hopes. We omit, besides, all 
reference to the letters in which Horace described the 
great Walpolean battle, and traced the fortunes of the 
Broad Bottom Administration. And, with few excep- 
tions, his accounts of later political events have also 
been excluded. The additions which his gossiping 
chronicles have made to our knowledge of these matters 
have been incorporated in most recent histories of the 

3 



34 Country Life, 

period ; the extracts given in the present volume are 
designed, as a rule, to illustrate the history of manners 
rather than of politics. 

From the moment of his return from the Continent 
until he lost his father, Horace lived in the old states- 
man's house, dividing his time, for the most part, 
between the House of Commons and the amusements 
of fashionable society. In the latter sphere, the Honour- 
able Mr. Walpole soon achieved success. Several years 
afterwards, he defined himself as a dancing senator. 
His first season witnessed the opening of Ranelagh 
Gardens, which at once became the resort of the great 
world. Grave ministers and privy councillors were to 
be seen there in the crowd of beauties and macaronis. 
Horace relates that he carried Sir Robert thither just 
before attending him on his retreat to Houghton. 
Constrained by filial duty, the young man revisited the 
family seat in each of the two following years, but he 
went sorely against his will. With his father's coarse 
habits and boisterous manners he had nothing in 
common ; his feeble constitution was unequal to the 
sports of the field, and the drinking that then accom- 
panied them ; nor could the scenery of Norfolk, which 
he disliked, make him forget the excitements of West- 
minster and Chelsea. Yet to these visits to Houghton 
his readers owe some entertaining sketches of English 
country life in the middle of the eighteenth century. 
Take, for instance, the following lively letter addressed 
to John Chute, whose acquaintance he had mi;.de at 
Florence : 



Country Life. 35 

"Houghton, August 20, 1743. 

" Indeed, my dear Sir, you certainly did not use to be 
stupid, and till you give me more substantial proof that 
you are so, I shall not believe it. As for your temperate 
diet and milk bringing about such a metamorphosis, I 
hold it impossible. I have such lamentable proofs every 
day before my eyes of the stupifying qualities of beef, 
ale, and wine, that I have contracted a most religious 
veneration for your spiritual nouriture. Only imagine 
that I here every day see men, who are mountains of 
roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into 
the outlines of human form, like the giant-rock at 
Pratolino ! I shudder when I see them brandish their 
knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages that 
devour one another. I should not stare at all more 
than I do, if yonder Alderman at the lower end of the 
table was to stick his fork into his neighbour's jolly 
cheek, and cut a brave slice of brown and fat. Why, 
I'll swear I see no difference between a country gentle- 
man and a sirloin ; whenever the first laughs, or the 
latter is cut, there run out just the same streams of 
gravy ! Indeed, the sirloin does not ask quite so many 
questions. I have an Aunt here, a family piece of goods, 
an old remnant of inquisitive hospitality and economy, 
who, to all intents and purposes, is as beefy as her 
neighbours. She wore me so down yesterday with 
interrogatories, that I dreamt all night she was at my 
ear with ' who's ' and ' why's,' and ' when's ' and 
' where's,' till at last in my very sleep I cried out, ' For 
heaven's sake, Madam, ask me no more questions 1' 

6—2 



36 Country Life. 

" Oh ! my dear Sir, don't you find that nine parts in 
ten of the world are of no use but to make you wish 
yourself with that tenth part ? I am so far from grow- 
ing used to mankind by living amongst them, that my 
natural ferocity and wildness does but every day grow 
worse. They tire me, they fatigue me ; I don't know 
what to do with them ; I don't know what to say to 
them ; I fling open the windows, and fancy I want air ; 
and when I get by myself, I undress myself, and seem 
to have had people in my pockets, in my plaits, and on 
my shoulders ! I indeed find this fatigue worse in the 
country than in town, because one can avoid it there 
and has more resources ; but it is there too. I fear 'tis 
growing old ; but I literally seem to have murdered a 
man whose name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever before 
me. They say there is no English word for ennui; I 
think you may translate it most literally by what is 
called 'entertaining people,' and 'doing the honours:' 
that is, you sit an hour with somebody you don't know 
and don't care for, talk about the wind and the weather, 
and ask a thousand foolish questions, which all begin 
with, ' I think you live a good deal in the country,' or, 
' I think you don't love this thing or that.' Oh ! 'tis 
dreadful ! 

" I'll tell you what is delightful — the Dominichin !* 
My dear Sir, if ever there was a Dominichin, if there 
was ever an original picture, this is one. I am quite 

* Thus described by Walpole in his account of the pictures at 
Houghton : "The Virgin and Child, a most beautiful, bright, and 
capital picture, by Dominichino : bought out of the Zambeccari 
Palace at Bologna by Horace Walpole, junior." 



Country Life. 37 

happy ; for my father is as much transported with it as 
I am. It is hung in the gallery, where are all his most 
capital pictures, and he himself thinks it beats all but 
the two Guidos. That of the Doctors and the Octagon 
— I don't know if you ever saw them ? What a chain 
of thought this leads me into ! but why should I not 
indulge it ? I will flatter myself with your some time 
or other passing a few days here with me. Why must 
I never expect to see anything but Beefs in a gallery 
which would not yield even to the Colonna ?" 

Again the following to Sir Horace Mann : 

" Newmarket, Oct. 3, 1743. 

" I am writing to you in an inn on the road to 
London. What a paradise should I have thought this 
when I was in the Italian inns ! in a wide barn with 
four ample windows, which had nothing more like glass 
than shutters and iron bars ! no tester to the bed, and 
the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off 
the cold. What a paradise did I think the inn at Dover 
when I came back ! and what magnificence were two- 
penny prints, salt cellars, and boxes to hold the knives ; 
but the summum bonum was small-beer and the news- 
paper. 

" ' I bless'd my stars, and call'd it luxury !' 

" Who was the Neapolitan ambassadress* that could 
not live at Paris, because there was no macaroni ? 
Now am I relapsed into all the dissatisfied repinement 
of a true English grumbling voluptuary. I could find 

* The Princess of Campoflorido. 



38 Country Life. 

in my heart to write a Craftsman against the Govern- 
ment, because I am not quite so much at my ease as on 
my own sofa. I could persuade myself that it is my 
Lord Carteret's fault that I am only sitting in a 
common arm-chair, when I would be lolling in a peche- 
mortel. How dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this 
town look ; and yet it has actually a street of houses 
better than Parma or Modena. Nay, the houses of the 
people of fashion, who come hither for the races, are 
palaces to what houses in London itself were fifteen 
years ago. People do begin to live again now, and I 
suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses, 
Clarendon Houses, etc. But from that grandeur all 
the nobility had contracted themselves to live in coops 
of a dining-room, a dark back-room, with one eye in a 
corner, and a closet. Think what London would be, if 
the chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other 
countries, and not dispersed like great rarity-plums in a 
vast pudding of country. Well, it is a tolerable place 
as it is ! Were I a physician, I would prescribe nothing 
but recipe, ccclxv drachm. Londin. Would you know 
why I like London so much ? Why, if the world must 
consist of so many fools as it does, I choose to take 
them in the gross, and not made into separate pills, as 
they are prepared in the country. Besides, there is no 
being alone but in a metropolis : the worst place in the 
world to find solitude is the country : questions grow there, 
and that unpleasant Christian commodity, neighbours. 
Oh ! they are all good Samaritans, and do so pour balms 
and nostrums upon one, if one has but the toothache, 



Country Life. 39 

or a journey to take, that they break one's head. A 
journey to take — ay ! they talk over the miles to you, 
and tell you, you will be late in. My Lord Lovel says, 
John always goes two hours in the dark in the morning, 
to avoid being one hour in the dark in the evening. I 
was pressed to set out to-day before seven: I did before 
nine ; and here am I arrived at a quarter past five, for 
the rest of the night. 

" I am more convinced every day, that there is not 
only no knowledge of the world out of a great city, but 
no decency, no practicable society — I had almost said 
not a virtue. I will only instance in modesty, which all 
old Englishmen are persuaded cannot exist within the 
atmosphere of Middlesex. Lady Mary has a remarkable 
taste and knowledge of music, and can sing — I don't 
say, like your sister ; but I am sure she would be ready 
to die if obliged to sing before three people, or before 
one with whom she is not intimate. The other day 
there came to see her a Norfolk heiress ; the young 
gentlewoman had not been three hours in the house, 
and that for the first time of her life, before she notified 
her talent for singing, and invited herself upstairs, to 
Lady Mary's harpsichord ; where, with a voice like 
thunder, and with as little harmony, she sang to nine 
or ten people for an hour. ' Was ever nymph like 
Rossymonde ?' — no, dlionncur. We told her she had a 
very strong voice. ' Why, Sir ! my master says it is 
nothing to what it was.' My dear child, she brags 
abominably ; if it had been a thousandth degree louder, 
you must have heard it at Florence." 



40 Ranelagh. 

Arrived in London, he is again in his element. " You 
must be informed," he writes to Conway, " that every 
night constantly I go to Ranelagh, which has totally 
beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else — everybody 
goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that 
he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed 
thither. If you had never seen it, I would make you a 
most pompous description of it, and tell you how the 
floor is all of beaten princes — that you can't set your 
foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of 
Cumberland. The company is universal : there is from 
his Grace of Grafton down to children out of the 
Foundling Hospital — from my Lady Townshend to the 
kitten — from my Lord Sandys* to your humble cousin 
and sincere friend." 

From scenes like this Conway's humble cousin was 
removed, though not for long, by the last illness and 
death of Lord Orford. The Rebellion of 1745, which 
quickly followed, produced only a momentary stir in 
London. But the trials and executions of the rebel 
Lords, occurring in the Capital itself, excited longer 
interest. We give Walpole's narrative of the execution 
of Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino : 

" Just before they came out of the Tower, Lord 
Balmerino drank a bumper to King James's health. As 
the clock struck ten, they came forth on foot, Lord 
Kilmarnock all in black, his hair unpowdered in a bag, 
supported by Forster, the great Presbyterian, and by 

* Lord Orford's successor as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 



The Rebel Lords. 4 1 

Mr. Home, a young clergyman, his friend. Lord 
Balmerino followed, alone, in a blue coat, turned up 
with red, (his rebellious regimentals,) a flannel waistcoat, 
and his shroud beneath ; their hearses following. They 
were conducted to a house near the scaffold : the room 
forwards had benches for spectators, in the second 
Lord Kilmarnock was put, and in the third backwards 
Lord Balmerino : all three chambers hung with black. 
Here they parted ! Balmerino embraced the other, 
and said, 'My lord, I wish I could suffer for both!' 
He had scarce left him, before he desired again to see 
him, and then asked him, ! My Lord Kilmarnock, do 
you know anything of the resolution taken in our army, 
the day before the battle of Culloden, to put the English 
prisoners to death ?' He replied, ' My lord, I was not pre- 
sent; but since I came hither, I have had all the reason in 
the world to believe that there was such order taken ; 
and I hear the Duke has the pocket-book with the 
order.' Balmerino answered, ' It was a lie raised to 
excuse their barbarity to us.' — Take notice, that the 
Duke's charging this on Lord Kilmarnock (certainly on 
misinformation) decided this unhappy man's fate ! The 
most now pretended is, that it would have come to 
Lord Kilmarnock's turn to have given the word for the 
slaughter, as lieutenant-general, with the patent for 
which he was immediately drawn into the rebellion, 
after having been staggered by his wife, her mother, his 
own poverty, and the defeat of Cope. He remained an 
hour and a half in the house, and shed tears. At last 
he came to the scaffold, certainly much terrified, but 



42 The Rebel Lords. 

with a resolution that prevented his behaving in the 

least meanly or unlike a gentleman.* He took no 

notice of the crowd, only to desire that the baize might 

be lifted up from the rails, that the mob might see the 

spectacle. He stood and prayed some time with Forster, 

who wept over him, exhorted and encouraged him. He 

delivered a long speech to the Sheriff, and with a noble 

manliness stuck to the recantation he had made at his 

trial ; declaring he wished that all who embarked in the 

same cause might meet the same fate. He then took 

off his bag, coat and waistcoat, with great composure, 

and after some trouble put on a napkin-cap, and then 

several times tried the block ; the executioner, who 

was in white, with a white apron, out of tenderness 

concealing the axe behind himself. At last the Earl 

knelt down, with a visible unwillingness to depart, and 

after five minutes dropped his handkerchief, the signal, 

and his head was cut off at once, only hanging by a bit 

of skin, and was received in a scarlet cloth by four of 

the undertaker's men kneeling, who wrapped it up and 

put it into the coffin with the body ; orders having 

been given not to expose the heads, as used to be the 

custom. 

* When he [Kilmarnock] beheld the fatal scaffold covered with 
black cloth ; the executioner, with his axe and his assistants ; the 
saw-dust, which was soon to be drenched with his blood ; the 
coffin, prepared to receive the limbs which were yet warm with 
life ; above all, the immense display of human countenances which 
surrounded the scaffold like a sea, all eyes being bent on the sad 
object of the preparation, — his natural feelings broke forth in a 
whisper to the friend on whose arm he leaned, " Home, this is 
terrible !" No si^n of indecent timidity, however, affected his beha- 
viour. — Sir Walter Scott's Tales of juy Grandfather. 



The Rebel Lords. 43 

" The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with 
saw-dust, the block new-covered, the executioner new- 
dressed, and a new axe brought. Then came old 
Balmerino, treading with the air of a general. As soon 
as he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription on 
his coffin, as he did again afterwards : he then surveyed 
the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even 
upon masts of ships in the river ; and pulling out his 
spectacles, read ajt reasonable speech, which he delivered 
to the Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was so 
sweet a Prince, that flesh and blood could not resist 
following him ; and lying down to try the block, he 
said, ' If I had a thousand lives, I would lay them all 
down here in the same cause.' He said, if he had not 
taken the sacrament the day before, he would have 
knocked down Williamson, the lieutenant of the Tower, 
for his ill-usage of him. He took the axe and felt it, 
and asked the headsman how many blows he had given 
Lord Kilmarnock ; and gave him three guineas. Two 
clergymen, who attended him, coming up, he said, 
' No, gentlemen, I believe you have already done me 
all the service you can.' Then he went to the corner 
of the scaffold, and called very loud for the warder, to 
give him his periwig, which he took off, and put on a 
night-cap of Scotch plaid, and then pulled off his coat 
and waistcoat and lay down ; but being told he was on 
the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave 
the sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving 
the signal for battle. He received three blows, but 
the first certainly took away all sensation. He was not 



44 The Earthquake. 

a quarter of an hour on the scaffold ; Lord Kilmarnock 
above half a one. Balmerino certainly died with the 
intrepidity of a hero, but with the insensibility of one 
too. As he walked from his prison to execution, seeing 
every window and top of house filled with spectators, 
he cried out, ' Look, look, how they are all piled up like 
rotten oranges !' " 

Horace was now in the full tide of fashion, not to say 
dissipation. For a good many years the opera, plays, 
balls, routs, and other diversions public and private 
occupy as much space in his letters as the war or the 
peace, the debates in Parliament, and the intrigues of 
party leaders. Mingled with topics of both kinds, we 
have journeys to visit great houses in the country, 
schemes for their improvement, designs for the Gothic 
villa at Strawberry Hill, abundance of scandal, and 
playful satire on the follies of the day. Here is an 
amusing account of the sensation produced by the 
earthquake which alarmed London in 1750. It will be 
seen that the more serious feelings which the event 
awakened were as ridiculous in Walpole's eyes as any 
part of the panic : 

" ' Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent, 
That they have lost their name.' 

" My text is not literally true ; but as far as earth- 
quakes go towards lowering the price of wonderful 
commodities, to be sure we are overstocked. We have 
had a second, much more violent than the first ; and 
you must not be surprised if by next post you hear 
of a burning mountain sprung up in Smithfield. In the 



The Earthquake. 45 

night between Wednesday and Thursday last, (exactly 
a month since the first shock,) the earth had a shivering 
fit between one and two ; but so slight that, if no more 
had followed, I don't believe it would have been noticed. 
I had been awake, and had scarce dozed again — on a 
sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head ; I thought 
somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon 
found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half 
a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I 
rang my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his 
senses : in an instant we heard all the windows in the 
neighbourhood flung up. I got up and found people 
running into the streets, but saw no mischief done : 
there has been some ; two old houses flung down, 
several chimneys, and much china-ware. The bells 
rang in several houses. Admiral Knowles, who has 
lived long in Jamaica, and felt seven there, says this 
was more violent than any of them : Francesco prefers 
it to the dreadful one at Leghorn. The wise say, that 
if we have not rain soon, we shall certainly have more. 
Several people are going out of town, for it has nowhere 
reached above ten miles from London : they say, they 
are not frightened, but that it is such fine weather, 
'Why, one can't help going into the country!' The 
only visible effect it has had, was on the ridotto, at 
which, being the following night, there were but four 
hundred people. A parson, who came into White's 
the morning of earthquake the first, and heard bets 
laid on whether it was an earthquake or the blowing up 
of powder-mills, went away exceedingly scandalised, 



46 The Earthquake. 

and said, ' I protest, they are such an impious set of 
people, that I believe if the last trumpet was to sound, 
they would bet puppet-show against Judgment.' If we 
get any nearer still to the torrid zone, I shall pique myself 
on sending you a present of cedrati and orange-flower 
water : I am already planning a terreno for Strawberry 
Hill. . . . 

" You will not wonder so much at our earthquakes as 
at the effects they have had. All the women in town 
have taken them up upon the foot of Judgments ; and 
the clergy, who have had no windfalls of a long season, 
have driven horse and foot into this opinion. There 
has been a shower of sermons and exhortations : 
Seeker,* the Jesuitical Bishop of Oxford, began the 
mode. He heard the women were all going out of 
town to avoid the next shock ; and so, for fear of losing 
his Easter offerings, he set himself to advise them to 
await God's good pleasure in fear and trembling. But 
what is more astonishing, Sherlock,t who has much 
better sense, and much less of the Popish confessor, 
has been running a race with him for the old ladies, 
and has written a pastoral letter, of which ten thousand 
were sold in two days ; and fifty thousand have been 
subscribed for, since the two first editions. 

" I told you the women talked of going out of town : 
several families are literally gone, and many more 

* Afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Walpole had a strong 
and unreasonable prejudice against him. 

t Thomas Sherlock, Master of the Temple ; first, Bishop of 
Salisbury, and afterwards of London. — Walpole. 



The Earthquake. 47 

going to-day and to-morrow ; for what adds to the 
absurdity is, that the second shock having happened 
exactly a month after the former, it prevails that there 
will be a third on Thursday next, another month, which 
is to swallow up London. I am almost ready to burn 
my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I 
am laughing at you : but it is so true, that Arthur of 
White's told me last night, that he should put off the 
last ridotto, which was to be on Thursday, because he 
hears nobody would come to it. I have advised several 
who are going to keep their next earthquake in the 
country, to take the bark for it, as it is so periodic. 
Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and 
stayed late at Bedford House the other night, knocked 
at several doors, and in a watchman's voice cried, 
' Past four o'clock, and a dreadful earthquake !' But I 
have done with this ridiculous panic : two pages were 
too much to talk of it. . . . 

" I had not time to finish my letter on Monday. I 
return to the earthquake, which I had mistaken ; it is 
to be to-day. This frantic terror prevails so much, 
that within these three days seven hundred and thirty 
coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park Corner, 
with whole parties removing into the country. Here is 
a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to- 
day : 

" ' On Monday next will be published (price 6d.) A true and exact 
List cf all the Nobility and Gentry who have left, or shall leave, 
this place through fear of another Earthquake.' 

" Several women have made earthquake gowns ; that 



48 The Earthquake. 

is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These 
are of the more courageous. One woman, still more 
heroic, is come to town on purpose ; she says, all her 
friends are in London, and she will not survive them. 
But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, 
Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, 
who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, 
where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, 
and then come back — I suppose, to look for the bones 
of their husbands and families under the rubbish ? The 
prophet of all this (next to the Bishop of London) is a 
trooper of Lord Delawar's, who was yesterday sent to 
Bedlam. His colonel sent to the man's wife, and asked 
her if her husband had ever been disordered before. 
She cried, ' Oh dear ! my lord, he is not mad now ; if 
your lordship would but get any sensible man to examine 
him, you would find he is quite in his right mind.' . . . 

" I did not doubt but you would be diverted with the 
detail of absurdities that were committed after the 
earthquake : I could have filled more paper with such 
relations, if I had not feared tiring you. We have 
swarmed with sermons, essays, relations, poems, and 
exhortations on that subject. One Stukely, a parson, 
has accounted for it, and I think prettily, by electricity 
— but that is the fashionable cause, and everything is 
resolved into electrical appearances, as formerly every- 
thing was accounted for by Descartes's vortices, and Sir 
Isaac's gravitation. But they all take care, after 
accounting for the earthquake systematically, to assure 



Vauxhall. 49 

you that still it was nothing less than a judgment. Dr. 
Barton, the Rector of St. Andrew's, was the only 
sensible, or at least honest divine, upon the occasion. 
When some women would have had him pray to them 
in his parish church against the intended shock, he 
excused himself on having a great cold. ' And besides,' 
said he, 'you may go to St. James's Church; the Bishop 
of Oxford is to preach there all night about earthquakes.' 
Turner, a great china-man, at the corner of next street, 
had a jar cracked by the shock : he originally asked 
ten guineas for the pair : he now asks twenty, ' because 
it is the only jar in Europe that has been cracked by 
an earthquake.' " 

Not long after the earthquake, we find Walpole 
engaged in a frolic at Vauxhall, though in the best 
company, Lady Caroline Petersham, his hostess on the 
occasion, being the dashing wife* of Lord Petersham, 
eldest son of the Earl of Harrington, who had been 
Secretary of State. We insert Walpole's history of 
the affair for the reason which he gives for telling it. 
It is part of a letter to George Montagu. After a jest 
about the habits of Buxton, where his friend's sister was 
then drinking the waters, the writer proceeds : 

" As jolly and as abominable a life as she may have 
been leading, I defy all her enormities to equal a party 
of pleasure that I had t'other night. I shall relate it 
to you to show you the manners of the age, which are 
always as entertaining to a person fifty miles off as to 

* She was daughter of the Duke of Grafton. 



50 Vaiixhall. 

one born an hundred and fifty years after the time. I 
had a card from Lady Caroline Petersham to go with 
her to Vauxhall. I went accordingly to her house, and 
found her and the little Ashe, or the Pollard Ashe, as 
they call her ; they had just finished their last layer of 
red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make 
them. . . . We issued into the Mall to assemble our 
company, which was all the town, if we could get it ; 
for just so many had been summoned, except Harry 
Vane, whom we met by chance. We mustered the 
Duke of Kingston, whom Lady Caroline says she has 
been trying for these seven years ; but alas ! his beauty 
is at the fall of the leaf; Lord March, Mr. Whitehed, a 
pretty Miss Beauclerc, and a very foolish Miss Sparre. 
These two damsels were trusted by their mothers for 
the first time of their lives to the matronly care of Lady 
Caroline. As we sailed up the Mall with all our colours 
flying, Lord Petersham,* with his hose and legs twisted 
to every point of crossness, strode by us on the outside, 
and repassed again on the return. At the end of the 
Mall she called to him ; he would not answer : she gave 
a familiar spring, and, between laugh and confusion, 
ran up to him, ' My lord, my lord ! why, you don't see 
us !' We advanced at a little distance, not a little 
awkward in expectation how all this would end, for my 
ord never stirred his hat, or took the least notice of 
anybody : she said, ' Do you go with us, or are you 
going anywhere else ?' — ' I don't go with you, I am going 
somewhere else ;' and away he stalked, as sulky as a 
* His gait was so singular, that he was called Peter Shamble. 



Vauxhall. 5 1 

ghost that nobody will speak to first. We got into the 
best order we could, and marched to our barge, with 
a boat of French horns attending, and little Ashe 
singing. We paraded some time up the river, and at 
last debarked at Vauxhall : there, if we had so pleased, 
we might have had the vivacity of our party increased 
by a quarrel ; for a Mrs. Lloyd,* who is supposed to be 
married to Lord Haddington, seeing the two girls 
following Lady Petersham and Miss Ashe, said aloud, 
' Poor girls, I am sorry to see them in such bad com- 
pany !' Miss Sparre, who desired nothing so much as 
the fun of seeing a duel — a thing which, though she is 
fifteen, she has never been so lucky as to see, — took due 
pains to make Lord March resent this ; but he, who is 
very lively and agreeable, laughed her out of this 
charming frolic with a great deal of humour. Here we 
picked up Lord Granby. ... If all the adventures 
don't conclude as you expect in the beginning of a 
paragraph, you must not wonder, for I am not making 
a history, but relating one strictly as it happened, and I 
think with full entertainment enough to content you. At 
last, we assembled in our booth, Lady Caroline in the 
front, with the vizor of her hat erect, and looking 
gloriously jolly and handsome. She had fetched my 
brother Orford from the next box, where he was enjoy- 
ing himself with his petite partie, to help us to mince 
chickens. We minced seven chickens into a china 
dish, which Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with 

* Mrs. Lloyd of Spring Gardens, to whom the Earl of Hadding- 
ton was married this yeax - . 

4—2 



5 2 Vauxhall. 

three pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring, and 
rattling, and laughing, and we every minute expecting 
to have the dish fly about our ears. She had brought 
Betty, the fruit-girl, with hampers of strawberries and 
cherries from Rogers's, and made her wait upon us, and 
then made her sup by us at a little table. The conver- 
sation was no less lively than the whole transaction. 
There was a Mr. O'Brien arrived from Ireland, who 
would get the Duchess of Manchester from Mr. Hussey,* 
if she were still at liberty. I took up the biggest hautboy 
in the dish, and said to Lady Caroline, ' Madam, Miss 
Ashe desires you would eat this O'Brien strawberry ;' 
she replied immediately, ' I won't, you hussey.' You 
may imagine the laugh this reply occasioned. After 
the tempest was a little calmed, the Pollard said, 
' Now, how anybody would spoil this story that was to 
repeat it, and say, I won't, you jade !' In short, the 
whole air of our party was sufficient, as you will easily 
imagine, to take up the whole attention of the garden ; 
so much so, that from eleven o'clock till half an hour 
after one we had the whole concourse round our booth : 
at last, they came into the little gardens of each booth 
on the sides of ours, till Harry Vane took up a bumper, 
and drank their healths, and was proceeding to treat 
them with still greater freedom. It was three o'clock 
before we got home." 

Our next extract displays even better than the last 

* An Irish adventurer, whose fine person had induced the 
Dowager Duchess of Manchester to marry him. He was after- 
wards created Earl of Beaulieu. O'Brien, it seems, was even taller 
than Hussey. 



A Housebreaker. 53 

our author's skill in telling a story. It also contains 
some pleasant references to his life at Strawberry Hill : 

" I have just been in London for two or three days, 
to fetch an adventure, and am returned to my hill and 
my castle. I can't say I lost my labour, as you shall 
hear. Last Sunday night, being as wet a night as you 
shall see in a summer's day, about half an hour after 
twelve, I was just come home from White's, and un- 
dressing to step into bed, when I heard Harry, who you 
know lies forwards, roar out, 'Stop thief!' and run 
down stairs. I ran after him. Don't be frightened ; I 
have not lost one enamel, nor bronze, nor have been 
shot through the head again. A gentlewoman, who 
lives at Governor Pitt's, next door but one to me, and 
where Mr. Bentley used to live, was going to bed too, 
and heard people breaking into Mr. Freeman's house, 
who, like some acquaintance of mine in Albemarle 
Street, goes out of town, locks up his doors, and leaves 
the community to watch his furniture. N.B. It was 
broken open but two years ago, and I and all the chair- 
men vow they shall steal his house away another time, 
before we will trouble our heads about it. Well, 
madam called out ' Watch !' two men, who were 
sentinels, ran away, and Harry's voice after them. 
Down came I, and with a posse of chairmen and 
watchmen found the third fellow in the area of Mr. 
Freeman's house. Mayhap you have seen all this in 
the papers, little thinking who commanded the detach- 
ment. Harry fetched a blunderbuss to invite the thief 
up. One of the chairmen, who was drunk, cried. 



54 A Housebreaker. 

' Give me the blunderbuss, I'll shoot him !' But as the 
general's head was a little cooler, he prevented military 
execution, and took the prisoner, without bloodshed, 
intending to make his triumphal entry into the metro- 
polis of Twickenham with his captive tied to the wheels 
of his post-chaise. I find my style rises so much with 
the recollection of my victory, that I don't know how 
to descend to tell you that the enemy was a carpenter, 
and had a leather apron on. The next step was to 
share my glory with my friends. I despatched a courier 
to White's for George Selwyn, who, you know, loves 
nothing upon earth so well as a criminal, except the 
execution of him. It happened very luckily that the 
drawer, who received my message, has very lately been 
robbed himself, and had the wound fresh in his memory. 
He stalked up into the club-room, stopped short, and 
with a hollow trembling voice said, ' Mr. Selwyn ! Mr. 
Walpole's compliments to you, and he has got a house- 
breaker for you !' A squadron immediately came to 
reinforce me, and having summoned Moreland with 
the keys of the fortress, we marched into the house to 
search for more of the gang. Col. Seabright with his 
sword drawn went first, and then I, exactly the figure 
of Robinson Crusoe, with a candle and lanthorn in my 
hand, a carbine upon my shoulder, my hair wet and 
about my ears, and in a linen night-gown and slippers. 
We found the kitchen shutters forced, but not finished ; 
and in the area a tremendous bag of tools, a hammer 
large enough for the hand of a Jael, and six chisels ! 
All which opima spolia, as there was no temple of 



Strawberry Hill. 55 

Jupiter Capitolinus in the neighbourhood, I was reduced 
to offer on the altar of Sir Thomas Clarges. 

" I am now, as I told you, returned to my plough 
with as much humility and pride as any of my grea* 
predecessors. We lead quite a rural life, have had a 
sheep-shearing, a hay-making, a syllabub under the 
cow, and a fishing of three gold-fish out of Poyang,* 
for a present to Madam Clive. They breed with me 
excessively, and are grown to the size of small perch. 
Everything grows, if tempests would let it ; but I have 
had two of my largest trees broke to-day with the wind, 
and another last week. I am much obliged to you for 
the flower you offer me, but by the description it is an 
Austrian rose, and I have several now in bloom. Mr. 
Bentley is with me, finishing the drawings for Gray's 
Odes ; there are some mandarin-cats fishing for gold- 
fish, which will delight you. . . . 

" You will be pleased with a story of Lord Bury, that 
is come from Scotland : he is quartered at Inverness ; 
the magistrates invited him to an entertainment with 
fire-works, which they intended to give on the morrow 
for the Duke's birth-day. He thanked them, assured 
them he would represent their zeal to his Royal High- 
ness ; but he did not doubt it would be more agreeable 
to him, if they postponed it to the day following, the 
anniversary of the battle of Culloden. They stared, 
said they could not promise on their own authority, but 
would go and consult their body. They returned, told 

* Walpole had given this Chinese name to a pond of gold-fijh at 
Strawberry Hill. 



56 Strawberry Hill. 

him it was unprecedented, and could not be complied 
with. Lord Bury replied, he was sorry they had not 
given a negative at once, for he had mentioned it to his 
soldiers, who would not bear a disappointment, and was 
afraid it would provoke them to some outrage upon the 
town. This did ; — they celebrated Culloden. . . ." 

A few years later Strawberry Hill had attained its 
greatest celebrity. In June, 1759, Walpole writes : 

" Strawberry Hill is grown a perfect Paphos ; it is the 
land of beauties. On Wednesday the Duchesses of 
Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury dined 
there ; the two latter stayed all night. There never 
was so pretty a sight as to see them all three sitting in 
the shell ; a thousand years hence, when I begin to 
grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk of that event, 
and tell young people how much handsomer the women 
of my time were than they will be then : I shall say, 
' Women alter now ; I remember Lady Ailesbury look- 
ing handsomer than her daughter, the pretty Duchess 
of Richmond, as they were sitting in the shell on my 
terrace with the Duchess of Hamilton, one of the 
famous Gunnings.' Yesterday t'other more famous 
Gunning [Lady Coventry] dined there. She has made 
a friendship with my charming niece, to disguise her 
jealousy of the new Countess's beauty: there were they 
two, their lords, Lord Buckingham, and Charlotte. 
You will think that I did not choose men for my parties 
so well as women. I don't include Lord Waldegrave in 
this bad election." 



TJie Gunnings. 57 

The famous Gunnings referred to in the last passage 
figure often in Walpole's letters. These two ladies were 
the daughters of Irish parents, and though of noble 
blood on the mother's side, are said to have been 
originally so poor that they had thought of being 
actresses ; and when they were first presented at 
Dublin Castle, they were supplied with clothes for the 
occasion by Mrs. Woffington, the actress. On their 
arrival in England, their beauty created such an im- 
pression, that they were followed by crowds in the 
Park and at Vauxhall. We even read that Maria, the 
elder, some years after her marriage, having been 
mobbed in the Park, was attended by a guard of 
soldiers. Maria married the Earl of Coventry, and 
died many years before her husband. Her younger 
sister, Elizabeth, who was reckoned the less beautiful 
of the two, married, first, the Duke of Hamilton, and, 
secondly, Colonel John Campbell, afterwards Duke of 
Argyll, for whom she had refused the Duke of Bridge- 
water. The penniless Irish girl, Elizabeth Gunning, 
was the mother of two Dukes of Hamilton and two 
Dukes of Argyll. Walpole's niece, of whom he sug- 
gests Lady Coventry was jealous, was a natural 
daughter of his brother, Sir Edward Walpole, and 
was then the bride of the Earl of Waldegrave, after 
whose death she became Duchess of Gloucester, by 
a clandestine marriage with George III.'s younger 
brother. By her first husband she had three daughters, 
the Ladies Waldegrave, whose portraits, by Reynolds, 
are included in this volume. 



58 Ossian. 

Before we leave that portion of Horace Wal- 
pole's correspondence which belongs to the reign of 
George II., we will give one letter of a character dif- 
ferent from those we have previously selected. It is 
addressed to Sir David Dalrymple, afterwards Lord 
Hailes, and deals entirely with literary subjects. The 
" Irish poems" referred to in it are, of course, the first 
fragments of " Ossian," then recently published by 
Macpherson : 

" Strawberry Hill, April 4, 1760. 

" As I have very little at present to trouble you with 
myself, I should have deferred writing till a better 
opportunity, if it were not to satisfy the curiosity of a 
friend ; a friend whom you, Sir, will be glad to have 
made curious, as you originally pointed him out as a 
likely person to be charmed with the old Irish poetry 
you sent me. It is Mr. Gray, who is an enthusiast 
about those poems, and begs me to put the following 
queries to you ; which I will do in his own words, and I 
may say truly, Poeta loquitur. 

" ' I am so charmed with the two specimens of 
Erse poetry, that I cannot help giving you the trouble 
to inquire a little farther about them, and should wish 
to see a few lines of the original, that I may form 
some slight idea of the language, the measures, and 
the rhythm. 

" ' Is there anything known of the author or authors, 
and of what antiquity are they supposed to be ? 

" ' Is there any more to be had of equal beauty, or at 
all approaching to it ? 



Ossian. 59 

" ' I have been often told, that the poem called 
Hardykanute* (which I always admired and still 
admire) was the work of somebody that lived a few 
years ago. This I do not at all believe, though it has 
evidently been retouched in places by some modern 
hand ; but, however, I am authorised by this report to 
ask, whether the two poems in question are certainly 
antique and genuine. I make this inquiry in quality of 
an antiquary, and am not otherwise concerned about 
it ; for if I were sure that anyone now living in 
Scotland had written them, to divert himself and 
laugh at the credulity of the world, I would undertake 
a journey into the Highlands only for the pleasure of 
seeing him.' 

" You see, Sir, how easily you may make our greatest 
southern bard travel northward to visit a brother. The 
young translator has nothing to do but to own a forgery, 
and Mr. Gray is ready to pack up his lyre, saddle 
Pegasus, and set out directly. But seriously, he, Mr. 
Mason, my Lord Lyttelton, and one or two more, 
whose taste the world allows, are in love with your 
Erse elegies : I cannot say in general they are so much 
admired — but Mr. Gray alone is worth satisfying. 

" The ' Siege of Aquileia,' of which you ask, pleased 
less than Mr. Home's other plays. t In my own opinion, 

* It was written by Mrs. Halket of Wardlaw. Mr. Lockhart 
states, that on the blank leaf of his copy of Allan Ramsay's " Ever- 
green," Sir Walter Scott has written, " Hardyknute was the first 
poem that I ever learnt, the last that I shall forget." 

f The " Siege of Aquileia," a tragedy, by John Home, produced 
at Drury Lane, 21st February, 1760. 



60 Sterne. 

' Douglas ' far exceeds both the others. Mr. Home 
seems to have a beautiful talent for painting genuine 
nature and the manners of his country. There was so 
little of nature in the manners of both Greeks and 
Romans, that I do not wonder at his success being less 
brilliant when he tried those subjects ; and, to say the 
truth, one is a little weary of them. At present, nothing 
is talked of, nothing admired, but what I cannot help 
calling a very insipid and tedious performance : it is a 
kind of novel, called ' The Life and Opinions of Tris- 
tram Shandy ;' the great humour of which consists in 
the whole narration always going backwards. I can 
conceive a man saying that it would be droll to write 
a book in that manner, but have no notion of his perse- 
vering in executing it. It makes one smile two or three 
times at the beginning, but in recompense makes one 
yawn for two hours. The characters are tolerably kept 
up, but the humour is for ever attempted and missed. 
The best thing in it is a Sermon, oddly coupled with a 
good deal of indecency, and both the composition of 
a clergyman. The man's head, indeed, was a little 
turned before, now topsy-turvy with his success and 
fame. Dodsley has given him six hundred and fifty 
pounds for the second edition and two more volumes 
(which I suppose will reach backwards to his great- 
great-grandfather) ; Lord Fauconberg, a donative* of 
one hundred and sixty pounds a year; and Bishop War- 
burton gave him a purse of gold and this compliment 
(which happened to be a contradiction), 'that it was 
* The living of Coxwold, in Yorkshire. 



Sterne. 6 i 

quite an original composition, and in the true Cervantic 
vein :' the only copy that ever was an original, except in 
painting, where they all pretend to be so. Warburton, 
however, not content with this, recommended the book 
to the bench of bishops, and told them Mr. Sterne, the 
author, was the English Rabelais. They had never 
heard of such a writer. Adieu!" 



62 A New Reign. 



CHAPTER III. 

A new reign. — Funeral of the late King. — Houghton revisited. — 
Election at Lynn. — Marriage of George the Third. — His Corona- 
tion. 

The accession of George III. was the beginning 
of a new era in English society. The character of 
George II. could inspire no respect. His successor, 
with all his faults, did as much perhaps towards 
reforming the manners of the higher classes as a more 
enlightened prince could have effected. His regular 
life and the strictness of his Court applied a pressure 
answering to that which grew daily stronger from below. 
The chief want of the aristocracy at this time was not 
so much culture as something more vitally important. 
Culture they did, indeed, sorely lack, but many in- 
fluences among themselves were tending to promote 
this. What they mainly needed to have enforced upon 
them from without was some regard to the first prin- 
ciples of social order, some recognition of moral and 
religious obligations. Those who despise the formal- 
ism of George III.'s reign, may reflect that to impose 
external decorum on the society represented in Hogarth's 
pictures was of itself no trifling improvement. Even 



A New Reign. 63 

this was some time in coming. It was retarded by the 
mistaken system of government which for a long while 
rendered the Crown unpopular. Still the signs of a 
change for the better gradually became apparent ; and 
when the close of the American War had removed the 
last subject of national discontent, the great majority of 
the upper, as well as of the middle ranks, rallied round 
the throne as the mainstay of public morality, sup- 
porting the King and the sedate minister of his choice 
against a rival whose irregularities recalled the disorders 
of a former time. 

We give the letter in which Walpole describes the 
funeral of George II. It should be stated that the 
writer did not long retain the favourable opinion he 
here expresses of the new Sovereign : 

"Arlington Street, Nov. 13, 1760. 
" Even the honeymoon of a new reign don't produce 
events every day. There is nothing but the common 
saying of addresses and kissing hands. The chief diffi- 
culty is settled ; Lord Gower yields the Mastership of 
the Horse to Lord Huntingdon, and removes to the 
Great Wardrobe, from whence Sir Thomas Robinson 
was to have gone into Ellis's place, but he is saved. 
The City, however, have a mind to be out of humour ; 
a paper has been fixed on the Royal Exchange, with 
these words, ' No petticoat Government, no Scotch 
Minister, no Lord George Sackville ;' two hints totally 
unfounded, and the other scarce true. No petticoat 
ever governed less, it is left at Leicester-house ; Lord 
George's breeches are as little concerned ; and, except 



64 Funeral of the late King. 

Lady Susan Stuart and Sir Harry Erskine, nothing- has 
yet been done for any Scots. For the King himself, he 
seems all good-nature, and wishing to satisfy every- 
body ; all his speeches are obliging. I saw him again 
yesterday, and was surprised to find the levee-room had 
lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. This Sove- 
reign don't stand in one spot, with his eyes fixed royally 
on the ground, and dropping bits of German news ; he 
walks about, and speaks to everybody. I saw him 
afterwards on the throne, where he is graceful and 
genteel, sits with dignity, and reads his answers to 
addresses well ; it was the Cambridge address, carried 
by the Duke of Newcastle in his Doctor's gown, and 
looking like the Medccin malgre hit. He had been vehe- 
mently solicitous for attendance, for fear my Lord 
Westmoreland, who vouchsafes himself to bring the 
address from Oxford, should outnumber him. Lord 
Lichfield and several other Jacobites have kissed 
hands ; George Selwyn says, ' They go to St James's, 
because now there are so many Stuarts there.' 

" Do you know, I had the curiosity to go to the bury- 
ing t'other night ; I had never seen a royal funeral ; 
nay, I walked as a rag of quality, which I found would 
be, and so it was, the easiest way of seeing it. It is 
absolutely a noble sight. The Prince's chamber, hung 
with purple, and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin 
under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast chande- 
liers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. 
The Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried 
to see that chamber. The procession, through a line 



Funeral of the late King. 65 

of foot-guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the 
horse-guards lining the outside, their officers with drawn 
sabres and crape sashes on horseback, the drums muffled, 
the fifes, bells tolling, and minute-guns, — all this was 
very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the 
Abbey, where we were received by the Dean and 
Chapter in rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing 
torches ; the whole Abbey so illuminated, that one saw 
it to greater advantage than by day ; the tombs, long 
aisles, and fretted roof, all appearing distinctly, and 
with the happiest chiaroscuro. There wanted nothing 
but incense, and little chapels here and there, with 
priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct ; yet 
one could not complain of its not being catholic enough. 
I had been in dread of being coupled with some boy of 
ten years old ; but the heralds were not very accurate, 
and I walked with George Grenville, taller and older, to 
keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel 
of Henry the Seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased ; 
no order was observed, people sat or stood where they 
could or would ; the yeomen of the guard were crying 
out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of the 
coffin ; the Bishop read sadly, and blundered in the 
prayers ; the fine chapter, Man that is bom of a woman, 
was chanted, not read ; and the anthem, besides being 
immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a 
nuptial. The real serious part was the figure of the 
Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melan- 
choly circumstances. He had a dark brown adonis, 
and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of five yard?. 

5 



66 Funeral of the late King. 

Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant : 
his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near 
two hours ; his face bloated and distorted with his late 
paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes, 
and placed over the mouth of the vault, into which, in 
all probability, he must himself so soon descend ; think 
how unpleasant a situation ! He bore it all with a firm 
and unaffected countenance. This grave scene was 
fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle. 
He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the 
chapel, and flung himself back in a stall, the Archbishop 
hovering over him with a smelling-bottle ; but in two 
minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and 
he ran about the chapel with his glass to spy who was 
or was not there, spying v/ith one hand, and mopping 
his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of 
catching cold ; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was 
sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turn- 
ing round, found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing 
upon his train, to avoid the chill of the marble. It 
was very theatric to look down into the vault where the 
coffin lay, attended by mourners with lights. Claver- 
ing, the groom of the bedchamber, refused to sit up 
with the body, and was dismissed by the King's order." 

The demise of the Crown, of course, dissolved Parlia- 
ment. Horace Walpole went down to Houghton to be 
re-elected for Lynn : 

"Houghton, March 25, 1761. 

" Here I am at Houghton ! and alone ! in this spot, 
where (except two hours last month) I have not been in 



Houghton Revisited. 



«5 



sixteen years ! Think, what a crowd of reflections ! 
No ; Gray, and forty churchyards, could not furnish so 
many ; nay, I know one must feel them with greater 
indifference than I possess, to have patience to put 
them into verse. Here I am, probably for the last time 
of my life, though not for the last time : every clock 
that strikes tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder 
church — that church, into which I have not yet had 
courage to enter, where lies that mother on whom I 
doated, and who doated on me ! There are the two 
rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever 
wished to enjoy it ! There too lies he who founded its 
greatness, to contribute to whose fall Europe was 
embroiled ; there he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while 
his friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real 
enemy, Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs 
of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets.* 

" The surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed ; 
accustomed for many years to see nothing but wretched 
daubs and varnished copies at auctions, I look at these 
as enchantment. My own description of them seems 
poor; but shall I tell you truly, the majesty of Italian 
ideas almost sinks before the warm nature of Flemish 
colouring. Alas ! don't I grow old ? My young 
imagination was fired with Guido's ideas : must they 
be plump as Abishag to warm me now ? Does great 

* " My flatterers here are all mutes. The oaks, the beeches, the 
chestnuts, seem to contend which best shall please the Lord of the 
Manor. They cannot deceive, they will not lie." — Sir Robert Wal- 
pole to General Churchill, Houghton, Juni 24th, 1743. 

5—2 



68 Houghton Revisited. 



&> 



youth feel with poetic limbs, as well as see with poetic 
eyes? In one respect I am very young, I cannot 
satiate myself with looking : an incident contributed to 
make me feel this more strongly. A party arrived, just 
as I did, to see the house, a man and three women in 
riding-dresses, and they rode post through the apart- 
ments. I could not hurry before them fast enough ; 
they were not so long in seeing for the first time, as I 
could have been in one room, to examine what I knew 
by heart. I remember formerly being often diverted 
with this kind of seers; they come, ask what such a 
room is called, in which Sir Robert lay, write it down, 
admire a lobster or a cabbage in a market-piece, dis- 
pute whether the last room was green or purple, and 
then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should be over- 
dressed. How different my sensations ! not a picture 
here but recalls a history ; not one, but I remember in 
Downing-street or Chelsea, where queens and crowds 
admired them, though seeing them as little as these 
travellers ! 

" When I had drunk tea, I strolled into the garden ; 
they told me it was now called the pleasure-ground. 
What a dissonant idea of pleasure ! those groves, those 
allies, where I have passed so many charming moments, 
are now stripped up or overgrown — many fond paths I 
could not unravel, though with a very exact clew in my 
memory : I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand 
hares ! In the days when all my soul was tuned to 
pleasure and vivacity (and you will think, perhaps, it is 
far from being out of tune yet), I hated Houghton and 



Houghton Revisited. 69 

its solitude ; yet I loved this garden, as now, with many 
regrets, I love Houghton ; Houghton, I know not what 
to call it, a monument of grandeur or ruin ! How I 
have wished this evening for Lord Bute ! how I could 
preach to him ! For myself, I do not want to be 
preached to ; I have long considered, how every Balbec 
must wait for the chance of a Mr. Wood. The ser- 
vants wanted to lay me in the great apartment — what, 
to make me pass my night as I have done my evening ! 
It were like proposing to Margaret Roper to be a 
duchess in the court that cut off her father's head, and 
imagining it would please her. I have chosen to sit in 
my father's little dressing-room, and am now by his 
scrutoire, where, in the height of his fortune, he used to 
receive the accounts of his farmers, and deceive himself, 
or us, with the thoughts of his economy. How wise a 
man at once, and how weak ! For what has he built 
Houghton ? for his grandson to annihilate, or for his 
son to mourn over. If Lord Burleigh could rise and 
view his representative driving the Hatfield stage, he 
would feel as I feel now. Poor little Strawberry ! at 
least, it will not be stripped to pieces by a descendant ! 
You will find all these fine meditations dictated by 
pride, not by philosophy. Pray consider through how 
many mediums philosophy must pass, before it is puri- 
fied— 

" ' how often must it weep, how often burn !' 

" My mind was extremely prepared for all this gloom 
by parting with Mr. Conway yesterday morning ; moral 
reflections or commonplaces are the livery one likes to 



jo Election at Lynn. 

wear, when one has just had a real misfortune. He is 
going to Germany : I was glad to dress myself up in 
transitory Houghton, in lieu of very sensible concern. 
To-morrow I shall be distracted with thoughts, at least 
images of very different complexion. I go to Lynn, and 
am to be elected on Friday. I shall return hither on 
Saturday, again alone, to expect Burleighides on Sunday, 
whom I left at Newmarket. I must once in my life 
see him on his grandfather's throne. 

" Epping, Monday night, thirty -first. — No, I have not 
seen him ; he loitered on the road, and I was kept at 
Lynn till yesterday morning. It is plain I never knew 
for how many trades I was formed, when at this time of 
day I can begin electioneering, and succeed in my new 
vocation. Think of me, the subject of a mob, who was 
scarce ever before in a mob, addressing them in the 
town-hall, riding at the head of two thousand people 
through such a town as Lynn, dining with above two 
hundred of them, amid bumpers, huzzas, songs, and 
tobacco, and finishing with country dancing at a ball 
and sixpenny whist ! I have borne it all cheerfully ; 
nay, have sat hours in conversation, the thing upon earth 
that I hate ; have been to hear misses play on the 
harpsichord, and to see an alderman's copies of Rubens 
and Carlo Marat. Yet to do the folks justice, they are 
sensible, and reasonable, and civilised ; their very lan- 
guage is polished since I lived among them. I attri- 
bute this to their more frequent intercourse with the 
world and the capital, by the help of good roads and 
postchaises, which, if they have abridged the King's 



Election at Lynn. ji 

dominions, have at least tamed his subjects. Well, 
how comfortable it will be to-morrow, to see my 
parroquet, to play at loo, and not be obliged to talk 
seriously ! The T Ieraclitus of the beginning of this 
letter will be overjoyed on finishing it to sign himself 
your old friend, 

" Democritus. 

" P.S. I forgot to tell you that my ancient aunt 
Hammond came over to Lynn to see me ; not from 
any affection, but curiosity. The first thing she said 
to me, though we have not met these sixteen years, 
was, ' Child, you have done a thing to-day, that your 
father never did in all his life ; you sat as they carried 
you, — he always stood the whole time.' ' Madam,' said 
I, ' when I am placed in a chair, I conclude I am to sit 
in it ; besides, as I cannot imitate my father in great 
things, I am not at all ambitious of mimicking him 
in little ones.' I am sure she proposes to tell her 
remarks to my uncle Horace's ghost, the instant they 
meet." 

The King's marriage followed a few months later : 
"Arlington Street, Sept. 10, 1761. 

" When we least expected the Queen, she came, 
after being ten days at sea, but without sickness for 
above half-an-hour. She was gay the whole voyage, 
sung to her harpsichord, and left the door of her cabin 
open. They made the coast of Suffolk last Saturday, 
and on Monday morning she landed at Harwich ; 
so prosperously has Lord Anson executed his com- 



J 2 The Royal Marriage. 

mission. She lay that night at your old friend Lord 
Abercorn's, at Witham in Essex ; and, if she judged by 
her host, must have thought she was coming to reign in 
the realm of taciturnity. She arrived at St. James's a 
quarter after three on Tuesday the 8th. When she 
first saw the Palace she turned pale : the Duchess of 
Hamilton smiled. ' My dear Duchess,' said the Prin- 
cess, 'you may laugh; you have been married twice ; 
but it is no joke to me.' Is this a bad proof of her 
sense ? On the journey they wanted her to curl her 
toupet. ' No, indeed,' said she, ' I think it looks as 
well as those of the ladies who have been sent for me : 
if the King would have me wear a periwig, I will ; other- 
wise I shall let myself alone.' The Duke of York gave 
her his hand at the garden-gate : her lips trembled, but 
she jumped out with spirit. In the garden the King 
met her ; she would have fallen at his feet ; he pre- 
vented and embraced her, and led her into the apart- 
ments, where she was received by the Princess of 
Wales and Lady Augusta : these three princesses 
only dined with the King. At ten the procession went 
to chapel, preceded by unmarried daughters of peers, 
and peeresses in plenty. The new Princess was led by 
the Duke of York and Prince William ; the Archbishop 
married them ; the King talked to her the whole time 
with great good humour, and the Duke of Cumberland 
have her away. She is not tall, nor a beauty ; pale, 
and very thin ; but looks sensible, and is genteel. Her 
hair is darkish and fine ; her forehead low, her nose 
very well, except the nostrils spreading too wide ; her 



The Royal Marriage. 73 

mouth has the same fault, but her teeth are good.* 
She talks a good deal, and French tolerably ; possesses 
herself, is frank, but with great respect to the King. 
After the ceremony, the whole company came into the 
drawing-room for about ten minutes, but nobody was 
presented that night. The Queen was in white and 
silver ; an endless mantle of violet-coloured velvet, 
lined with ermine, and attempted to be fastened on 
her shoulder by a bunch of large pearls, dragged 
itself and almost the rest of her clothes halfway down 
her waist. On her head was a beautiful little tiara of 
diamonds ; a diamond necklace, and a stomacher of 
diamonds, worth three score thousand pounds, which 
she is to wear at the Coronation too. Her train was 
borne by the ten bridesmaids, Lady Sarah Lenox, Lady 
Caroline Russell, Lady Caroline Montagu, Lady Har- 
riot Bentinck, Lady Anne Hamilton, Lady Essex Kerr 
(daughters of Dukes of Richmond, Bedford, Manches- 
ter, Portland, Hamilton, and Roxburgh) ; and four 
daughters of the Earls of Albemarle, Brook, Harcourt, 
and Ilchester, — Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Louisa Gre- 
ville, Elizabeth Harcourt, and Susan Fox Strangways : 
their heads crowned with diamonds, and in robes of 
white and silver. Lady Caroline Russell is extremely 



* " Queen Charlotte had always been if not ugly, at least ordinary, 
but in her later years her want of personal charms became of course 
less observable, and it used to be said that she was grown better 
looking. I one day said something to this effect tc Colonel Dis- 
browe, her Chamberlain. ' Yes,' replied he, ' I do think that the 
bloom of her ugliness is going off.'"— CROKER. 



74 The Royal Marriage. 

handsome; Lady Elizabeth Keppel very pretty; bull 
with neither features nor air, nothing ever looked sti 
charming as Lady Sarah Lenox ; she has all the glow 
of beauty peculiar to her family. As supper was not 
ready, the Queen sat down, sung, and played on the 
harpsichord to the Royal Family, who all supped with 
her in private. They talked of the different German 
dialects ; the King asked if the Hanoverian was not 
pure — ' Oh, no, sir,' said the Queen ; ' it is the worst of 
all.' — She will not be unpopular. 

" The Duke of Cumberland told the King that himself 
and Lady Augusta were sleepy. The Queen was very 
averse to leave the company, and at last articled that 
nobody should accompany her but the Princess of 
Wales and her own two German women, and that 
nobody should be admitted afterwards but the King 
— they did not retire till between two and three. 

" The next morning the King had a Levee. After 
the Levee there was a Drawing- Room ; the Queen 
stood under the throne : the women were presented 
to her by the Duchess of Hamilton, and then the men 
by the Duke of Manchester ; but as she knew nobody, 
she was not to speak. At night there was a ball, 
drawing-rooms yesterday and to-day, and then a cessa- 
tion of ceremony till the Coronation, except next 
Monday, when she is to receive the address of the 
Lord Mayor and Aldermen, sitting on the throne 
attended by the bridesmaids. A ridiculous circum- 
stance happened yesterday; Lord Westmoreland, not 
very young nor clear-sighted, mistook Lady Sarah 



The Coronation. 75 

Lenox for the Queen, kneeled to her, and would have 
kissed her hand if she had not prevented him. People 
think that a Chancellor of Oxford was naturally attracted 
by the blood of Stuart. It is is comical to see Kitty 
Dashwood, the famous old beauty of the Oxfordshire 
Jacobites, living in the palace as Duenna to the Queen. 
She and Mrs. Broughton, Lord Lyttelton's ancient 
Delia, are revived again in a 3'oung court that never 
heard of them. There, I think you could not have had 
a more circumstantial account of a royal wedding from 
the Heralds' Office. Adieu ! 

" Yours to serve you, 

" Horace Sandford, 
" Mecklenburgh King-at-Arms." 

The Coronation of the King and Queen took place on 
the 22nd of September, 1761, a fortnight after their 
marriage. Walpole writes to Mann : 

" Strawberry Hill, Sept. 28, 1 761. 

" What is the finest sight in the world ? A Corona- 
tion. What do people talk most about ? A Coronation. 
Indeed, one had need be a handsome young peeress not 
to be fatigued to death with it. After being exhausted 
with hearing of nothing else for six weeks, and having 
every cranny of my ideas stuffed with velvet and ermine, 
and tresses, and jewels, I thought I was very cunning in 
going to lie in Palace-yard, that I might not sit up all 
night in order to seize a place. The consequence of 
this wise scheme was, that I did not get a wink of sleep 
all night ; hammering of scaffolds, shouting of people, 



76 The Coronation 

relieving guards, and jangling of bells, was the concert 
I heard from twelve to six, when I rose ; and it was 
noon before the procession was ready to set forth, and 
night before it returned from the Abbey. I then saw 
the Hall, the dinner, and the champion, a gloriously 
illuminated chamber, a wretched banquet, and a foolish 
puppet-show. A Trial of a peer, though by no means 
so sumptuous, is a preferable sight, for the latter is 
interesting. At a Coronation one sees the peerage as 
exalted as they like to be, and at a Trial as much 
humbled as a plebeian wishes them. I tell you nothing 
of who looked well ; you know them no more than if I 
told you of the next Coronation. Yes, two ancient 
dames whom you remember, were still ornaments of the 
show, — the Duchess of Queensberry and Lady West- 
moreland. Some of the peeresses were so fond of their 
robes, that they graciously exhibited themselves for a 
whole day before to all the company their servants 
could invite to see them. A maid from Richmond 
begged leave to stay in town because the Duchess of 
Montrose was only to be seen from two to four. The 
Heralds were so ignorant of their business, that, though 
pensioned for nothing but to register lords and ladies, 
and what belongs to them, they advertised in the news- 
paper for the Christian names and places of abode of 
the peeresses. The King complained of such omissions 
and of the want of precedent ; Lord Effingham, the 
Earl Marshal, told him, it was true there had been 
great neglect in that office, but he had now taken such 
care of registering directions, that next coronation would 



The Coronation. 77 

be conducted with the greatest order imaginable. The 
King was so diverted with this flattering speech that he 
made the earl repeat it several times. 

" On this occasion one saw to how high-water-mark 
extravagance is risen in England. At the Coronation 
of George II. my mother gave forty guineas for a dining- 
room, scaffold, and bedchamber. An exactly parallel 
apartment, only with rather a worse view, was this time 
set at three hundred and fifty guineas — a tolerable rise 
in thirty-three years ! The platform from St. Margaret's 
Round-house to the church-door, which formerly let for 
forty pounds, went this time for two thousand four 
hundred pounds. Still more was given for the inside of 
the Abbey. The prebends would like a Coronation 
every year. The King paid nine thousand pounds for 
the hire of jewels ; indeed, last time, it cost my father 
fourteen hundred to bejewel my Lady Orford. A single 
shop now sold six hundred pounds' sterling worth of 
nails — but nails are risen — so is everything, and every- 
thing adulterated. If we conquer Spain, as we have 
done France, I expect to be poisoned." 

An observation as awkward as that of Lord Effing- 
ham had been made by the beautiful Lady Coventry to 
George II. " She was tired of sights," she said ; 
"there was only one left that she wanted to see, and 
that was a coronation." The old man, says Walpole, 
told the story himself at supper to his family with great 
good humour. As it happened, he outlived Lady 
Coventry by a few days. 



yS General Taste for Pleasure. 



CHAPTER IV. 

General Taste for Pleasure. — Entertainments at Twickenham and 
Esher. — Miss Chudleigh's Ball. — Masquerade at Richmond 
House. — The Gallery at Strawberry Hill. — Balls. — The Duchess 
of Oueensberry. — Petition of the Periwig-makers. — Ladies' Head- 
gear. — Almack's. — The Castle of Otranto. — Plans for a Bower. — 
A Late Dinner. — Walpole's Idle Life. — Social usages. 

For some years after the arrival of the Queen, the 

enlivening influence of a new reign is clearly traceable 

in Walpole's letters. The Court, indeed, did not 

willingly contribute much to the national gaiety. Its 

plainness and economy soon incurred reproach ;* while 

there were intervals in which the first uncertain signs 

of mental derangement caused the young King to be 

withdrawn from public observation. Still there were 

christenings and birthdays, with now and then a 

wedding, to be celebrated in the royal family ; and the 

State festivities, unavoidable on these occasions, were 

eagerly emulated by the nobility. The Peace of Paris, 

too, was not only welcomed with popular rejoicings, 

* " The recluse life led here at Richmond, which is carried to 
such an excess of privacy and economy, that the Queen's friseur 
waits on them at dinner, and that four pounds only of beef are 
allowed for their soup, disgusts all sorts of people." — Walpole to 
Lord Hertford^ Sep. 9, 1764. 



General Taste for Pleasure. 79 

but produced a general stir in society by the renewed 
intercourse which it brought about between France and 
England. " The two nations," writes Horace, " are 
crossing over and figuring-in." A trifle restrained by 
the example of the Court and the presence of foreign 
visitors, the appetite for pleasure became universal 
among the English higher classes. Lord Bute and the 
Princess of Wales, Wilkes and the North Briton, the 
debates on privilege and on general warrants, divided 
the attention of Walpole's world with the last entertain- 
ment at the Duke of Richmond's or Northumberland 
House, with Miss Chudleigh's last ball, with the riots 
at Drury Lane Theatre, with the fetes in honour of 
the marriage of the Princess Augusta and the Prince 
of Brunswick, or, somewhat later, of the ill-starred 
union between the Princess Caroline and the King of 
Denmark. We hear no more of frolics at Vauxhall, 
but we find galas, masquerades, ridottos, festinos, dis- 
plays of fireworks following each other in rapid succes- 
sion through our author's pages ; sometimes several 
such scenes are described in the same letter. There is, 
of course, much sameness in these descriptions, but 
some passages serve to illustrate the tastes of the age. 
We will make three or four brief extracts. Our first 
choice is an account of two entertainments given to 
French guests of rank, one by Horace himself at 
Strawberry Hill, the other by Miss Pelham at the 
country seat celebrated by Pope and Thomson. The 
whole story is contained in a letter to George Montagu, 
written in May, 1763 : 

" ' On vient de nous donner une tres jolie fete au 



80 Fete at Strawberry Hitt. 

chateau de Straberri : tout etoit tapiss6 de narcisses, de 
tulipes, et de lilacs : des cors de chasse, des clarionettes; 
des petits vers galants faits par des fees, et qui se trou- 
voient sous la presse; des fruits a la glace, du the, du 
caffe, des biscuits, et force hot-rolls.'* — This is not the 
beginning of a letter to you, but of one that I might 
suppose sets out to-night for Paris, or rather, which I 
do not suppose will set out thither ; for though the 
narrative is circumstantially true, I don't believe the 
actors were pleased enough with the scene, to give so 
favourable an account of it. 

"The French do not come hither to see. A VAnglaise 
happened to be the word in fashion ; and half a dozen 
of the most fashionable people have been the dupes of 
it. I take for granted that their next mode will be 
a Vlroquaise, that they may be under no obligation of 
realising their pretensions. Madame de Boufflers 
I think will die a martyr to a taste, which she fancied 
she had, and finds she has not. Never having stirred 
ten miles from Paris, and having only rolled in an easy 
coach from one hotel to another on a gliding pavement, 
she is already worn out with being hurried from morn- 
ing till night from one sight to another. She rises 
every morning so fatigued with the toils of the preceding 
day, that she has not strength, if she had inclination, to 

* Walpole was thinking of an anecdote he had told in a pre- 
vious letter. " The old Mardchale de Villars gave a vast dinner 
[at Paris] to the Duchess of Bedford. In the middle of the dessert, 
Madame de Villars called out, ' Oh dear ! they have forgot ! yet I 
bespoke them, and I am sure they are ready ; you English love hot 
rolls — bring the rolls.' There arrived a huge dish of hot rolls, anH 
a sauce-boat of melted butter." 



Fete at Strawberry Hill. 81 

observe the least, or the finest thing she sees ! She 
came hither to-day to a great breakfast I made for her, 
with her eyes a foot deep in her head, her hands 
dangling, and scarce able to support her knitting-bag. 
She had been yesterday to see a ship launched, and 
went from Greenwich by water to Ranelagh. Madame 
Dusson, who is Dutch-built, and whose muscles are 
pleasure-proof, came with her; there were besides, 
Lady Mary Coke, Lord and Lady Holdernesse, the 
Duke and Duchess of Grafton, Lord Hertford, Lord 
Villiers, Offley, Messieurs de Fleury, D'Eon, et 
Duclos. The latter is author of the Life of Louis 
Onze ; dresses like a dissenting minister, which I 
suppose is the livery of a bel esprit, and is much more 
impetuous than agreeable. We breakfasted in the 
great parlour, and I had filled the hall and large 
cloister by turns with French horns and clarionettes. 
As the French ladies had never seen a printing-house, 
I carried them into mine ; they found something ready 
set, and desiring to see what it was, it proved as 
follows : 

ie The Press speaks — 

"For Madame De Boufflers. 

i: ' The graceful fair, who loves to know, 
Nor dreads the north's inclement snow ; 
Who bids her polish'd accent wear 
The British diction's harsher air ; 
Shall read her praise in every clime 
Where types can speak or poets rhyme. 



82 Fete at Strawberry Hill. 

"For Madame Dusson. 

" Feign not an ignorance of what I speak ; 
You could not miss my meaning were it Greek : 
'Tis the same language Belgium utter'd first, 
The same which from admiring Gallia burst. 
True sentiment a like expression pours ; 
Each country says the same to eyes like yours. 

" You will comprehend that the first speaks English, 
and that the second does not ; that the second is hand- 
some, and the first not ; and that the second was born 
in Holland. This little gentilesse pleased, and atoned 
for the popery* of my house, which was not serious 
enough for Madame de Boufflers, who is Montmorency, 
et du sang du premier Chretien ; and too serious for 
Madame Dusson, who is a Dutch Calvinist. . . . The 
Gallery is not advanced enough to give them any idea 
at all, as they are not apt to go out of their way for one ; 
but the Cabinet, and the glory of yellow glass at top, 
which had a charming sun for a foil, did surmount their 
indifference, especially as they were animated by the 
Duchess of Grafton, who had never happened to be 
here before, and who perfectly entered into the air of 

* " The Due de Nivernois [the French ambassador] called here 
the other day in his way from Hampton Court ; but, as the most 
sensible French never have eyes to see anything, unless they see it 
every day and see it in fashion, I cannot say he flattered me much, 
or was much struck with Strawberry. When I carried him into the 
Cabinet, which I have told you is formed upon the idea of a Catho- 
lic chapel, he pulled off his hat, but perceiving his error, he said, 
' Ce n'est pas line chapclle pourtant] and seemed a little displeased.'' 
— Walpole to Mann, AprU 30, 1763. 



Entertainment at Esher. 83 

enchantment and fairyism, which is the tone of the 
place, and was peculiarly so to-day. 

" Thursday. 

" I am ashamed of myself to have nothing but a 
journal of pleasures to send you ; I never passed a 
more agreeable day than yesterday. Miss Pelham 
gave the French an entertainment at Esher ; but they 
have been so feasted and amused, that none of them 
were well enough, or reposed enough, to come, but 
Nivernois and Madame Dusson. The rest of the com- 
pany were, the Graftons, Lady Rockingham, Lord and 
Lady Pembroke. . . . The day was delightful, the scene 
transporting ; the trees, lawns, concaves, all in the per- 
fection in which the ghost of Kent* would joy to see 
them. At twelve we made the tour of the farm in 
eight chaises and calashes, horsemen, and footmen, 
setting out like a picture of Wouverman's. My lot 
fell in the lap of Mrs. Anne Pitt,t which I could have 
excused, as she was not at all in the style of the day, 
romantic, but political. We had a magnificent dinner, 
cloaked in the modesty of earthenware ; French horns 
and hautboys on the lawn. We walked to the Belvi- 
dere on the summit of the hill, where a theatrical 

* " Esher's peaceful grove 
Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love." — Pope. 

" Esher's groves, 
Where, in the sweetest solitude, embraced 
By the soft windings of the silent Mole, 
From courts and senates Pelham finds repose."— Thomson. 

f Mrs. Anne Pitt, sister of Lord Chatham. 

6—2 



84 Entertainment at Esher. 

storm only served to heighten the beauty of the land- 
scape, a rainbow on a dark cloud falling precisely 
behind the tower of a neighbouring church, between 
another tower and the building at Claremont. Mon- 
sieur de Nivernois, who had been absorbed all day, and 
lagging behind, translating my verses, was delivered of 
his version, and of some more lines which he wrote on 
Miss Pelham in the Belvidere, while we drank tea and 
coffee. From thence we passed into the wood, and 
the ladies formed a circle on chairs before the mouth of 
the cave, which was overhung to a vast height with 
woodbines, lilacs, and laburnums, and dignified by the 
tall shapely cypresses. On the descent of the hill were 
placed the French horns ; the abigails, servants, and 
neighbours wandering below by the river ; in short, it 
was Parnassus, as Watteau would have painted it. 
Here we had a rural syllabub, and part of the company 
returned to town ; but were replaced by Giardini and 
Onofrio, who with Nivernois on the violin, and Lord 
Pembroke on the base, accompanied Miss Pelham, 
Lady Rockingham, and the Duchess of Grafton, who 
sang. This little concert lasted till past ten ; then 
there were minuets, and as we had several couples left, 
it concluded with a country dance. I blush again, for 
I danced, but was kept in countenance by Nivernois, 
who has one wrinkle more than I have. A quarter 
after twelve they sat down to supper, and I came home 
by a charming moonlight. I am going to dine in town, 
and to a great ball with fireworks at Miss Chudleigh's, 
but I return hither on Sunday, to bid adieu to this 



Miss Chudleigti s Ball. 85 

abominable Arcadian life ; for really when one is not 
young, one ought to do nothing but s'ennuyer; I will 
try, but I always go about it awkwardly." 

Two days later this indefatigable chronicler of trifles 
describes to Conway the fete given by Miss Chudleigh, 
afterwards known as the Duchess of Kingston, but at 
that time a maid of honour to the Princess-Dowager of 

Wales : 

"Oh, that you had been at her ball t'other night! 
History could never describe it and keep its counte- 
nance. The Queen's real birthday, you know, is not 
kept : this Maid of Honour kept it — nay, while the 
Court is in mourning, expected people to be out of 
mourning; the Queen's family really was so, Lady 
Northumberland having desired leave for them. A 
scaffold was erected in Hyde-park for fireworks. To 
show the illuminations without to more advantage, the 
company were received in an apartment totally dark, 
where they remained for two hours. . . . The fireworks 
were fine, and succeeded well. On each side of the 
court were two large scaffolds for the Virgin's* trades- 
people. When the fireworks ceased, a large scene was 
lighted in the court, representing their Majesties ; on 
each side of which were six obelisks, painted with 
emblems, and illuminated ; mottoes beneath in Latin 
and English. . . . The lady of the house made many 
apologies for the poorness of the performance, which 

Miss Chudleigh. 



86 Masquerade at Richmond House. 

she said was only oil-paper, painted by one of her 
servants ; but it really was fine and pretty. Behind 
the house was a cenotaph for the Princess Elizabeth, 
a kind of illuminated cradle ; the motto, A 11 the honours 
the dead can receive. This burying-ground was a strange 
codicil to a festival ; and, what was more strange, about 
one in the morning, this sarcophagus burst out into 
crackers and guns. The Margrave of Anspach began 
the ball with the Virgin. The supper was most sump- 
tuous." 

A fortnight afterwards he writes : 

" June 7th. 
" Last night we had a magnificent entertainment at 
Richmond House, a masquerade and fireworks. A 
masquerade was a new sight to the young people, who 
had dressed themselves charmingly, without having the 
fear of an earthquake before their eyes, though Prince 
William and Prince Henry* were not suffered to be 
there. The Duchesses of Richmond and Grafton, the 
first as a Persian Sultana, the latter as Cleopatra, — and 
such a Cleopatra ! were glorious figures, in very different 
styles. Mrs. Fitzroy in a Turkish dress, Lady George 
Lenox and Lady Bolingbroke as Grecian girls, Lady 
Mary Coke as Imoinda, and Lady Pembroke as a pil- 
grim, were the principal beauties of the night. The 
whole garden was illuminated, and the apartments. 
An encampment of barges decked with streamers in 
the middle of the Thames, kept the people from danger, 

* Afterwards Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland. 



The Gallery at Strawberry Hill. 87 

and formed a stage for the fireworks, which were placed, 
too, along the rails of the garden. The ground rooms 
lighted, with suppers spread, the houses covered and 
filled with people, the bridge, the garden full of masks, 
Whitehall crowded with spectators to see the dresses 
pass, and the multitude of heads on the river who came 
to light by the splendour of the fire-wheels, composed 
the gayest and richest scene imaginable, not to men- 
tion the diamonds and sumptuousness of the habits. 
The Dukes of York and Cumberland, and the Mar- 
grave of Anspach, were there, and about six hundred 
masks." 

In the intervals of these engagements, he is busy at 
Strawberry Hill. Thus, in arranging a short visit to 
George Montagu, he says (July 1) : 

"The journey you must accept as a great sacrifice 
either to you or to my promise, for I quit the Gallery 
almost in the critical minute of consummation. Gilders, 
carvers, upholsterers, and picture-cleaners are labouring 
at their several forges, and I do not love to trust a 
hammer or a brush without my own supervisal. This 
will make my stay very short, but it is a greater compli- 
ment than a month would be at another season ; and 
yet I am not profuse of months. Well, but I begin to 
be ashamed of my magnificence ; Strawberry is growing 
sumptuous in its latter day ; it will scarce be any longer 
like the fruit of its name, or the modesty of its ancient 
demeanour, both which seem to have been in Spenser's 
prophetic eye, when he sung of 



88 Balls. 

"' the blushing strawberries 

Which lurk, close-shrouded from high-looking eyes, 
Showing that sweetness low and hidden lies.' 

" In truth, my collection was too great already to be 
lodged humbly ; it has extended my walls, and pomp 
followed. It was a neat, small house ; it now will be a 
comfortable one, and, except one fine apartment, does 
not deviate from its simplicity. Adieu ! I know nothing 
about the world, and am only Strawberry's and yours 
sincerely." 

Our next extract shows that, however fond of fre- 
quenting large parties, the writer had little inclination 
to give them, at any rate, in his toy-house : 

" We had, last Monday, the prettiest ball that ever 
was seen, at Mrs. Anne Pitt's, in the compass of a 
silver penny. There were one hundred and four per- 
sons, of which number fifty-five supped. The supper- 
room was disposed with tables and benches back to 
back, in the manner of an ale-house. The idea sounds 
ill; but the fairies had so improved upon it, had so 
be- garlanded, so sweetmeated, and so desserted it, that it 
looked like a vision. I told her she could only have fed 
and stowed so much company by a miracle, and that, 
when we were gone, she would take up twelve baskets- 
full of people. The Duchess of Bedford asked me 
before Madame de Guerchy, if I would not give them a 
ball at Strawberry? Not for the universe! What, 
turn a ball, and dust, and dirt, and a million of candles, 
into my charming new gallery ! I said, I could not 



Balls. 89 

flatter myself that people would give themselves the 
trouble of going eleven miles for a ball — (though I 
believe they would go fifty). — 'Well, then,' says she, 
' it shall be a dinner.' — ' With all my heart, I have no 
objection ; but no ball shall set its foot within my 
doors.' " — Walpole to Lord Hertford, Feb. 24, 1764. 

The promised dinner was duly given. " Strawberry," 
we read soon afterwards, "has been more sumptuous 
to-day than ordinary, and banquetted their representa- 
tive Majesties of France and Spain. . . . They really 
seemed quite pleased with the place and the day ; but 
I must tell you, the treasury of the abbey will feel it, 
for, without magnificence, all was handsomely done." 
Mrs. Anne Pitt, the giver of the ball, was present at the 
banquet. In describing to a foreigner this lady's strong 
likeness to her famous brother, Walpole once said 
happily, " Qu'ils se ressemblaient comme deux gouttes 
de /<?«." Another eccentric entertainer of the day was 
the Duchess of Queensberry, " very clever, very whimsi- 
cal, and just not mad." Of her we are told : 

" Last Thursday, the Duchess of Queensberry gave a 
ball, opened it herself with a minuet, and danced two 
country dances: as she had enjoined everybody to be 
with her by six, to sup at twelve, and go away directly. 
. . . The only extraordinary thing the Duchess did, was 
to do nothing extraordinary, for I do not call it very 
mad that some pique happening between her and the 
Duchess of Bedford, the latter had this distich sent to 
her, 



90 The Periwig-makers. 

ut Come with a whistle, and come with a call, 
Come with a good will, or come not at all.' 

" I do not know whether what I am going to tell you 
did not border a little upon Moorfields.* The gallery 
where they danced was very cold. Lord Lorn, George 
Selwyn, and I, retired into a little room, and sat com- 
fortably by the fire. The Duchess looked in, said 
nothing, and sent a smith to take the hinges of the door 
off. We understood the hint, and left the room, and so 
did the smith the door. This was pretty legible." — 
Walpole to Lord Hertford, March II, 1764. 

A little later on we have more gossip about the 
humours of the day and of Lady Queensberry. Writing 
to the same correspondent, under date of Febuary 12, 
1765, Horace says : 

" If it was not too long to transcribe, I would send 
you an entertaining petitiont of the periwig-makers to 
the King, in which they complain that men will wear 
their own hair. Should one almost wonder if carpenters 
were to remonstrate, that since the peace their trade 

* The old Bedlam stood in Moorfields. 

t The substance of this petition, and the grave answer which the 
King was advised to give to such a ludicrous appeal, are preserved 
in the GentlemaiCs Magazine for 1765, p. 95 ; where also we learn 
that Mr. Walpole's idea of the Carpenters' petition was put in 
practice, and his Majesty was humbly entreated to wear a wooden 
leg himself, and to enjoin all his servants to do the same. It may, 
therefore, be presumed that this j'eu d'esprit was from the pen of 
Mr. Walpole. 



Ladies Head-gear. 91 

decays, and that there is no demand for wooden legs ? 
Apropos, my Lady Hertford's friend, Lady Harriot 
Vernon, has quarrelled with me for smiling at the 
enormous head-gear of her daughter, Lady Grosvenor. 
She came one night to Northumberland-house with such 
display of friz, that it literally spread beyond her shoul- 
ders. I happened to say it looked as if her parents had 
stinted her in hair before marriage, and that she was 
determined to indulge her fancy now. This, among 
ten thousand things said by all the world, was reported 
to Lady Harriot, and has occasioned my disgrace. As 
she never found fault with anybody herself, I excuse 
her ! You will be less surprised to hear that the 
Duchess of Queensberry has not yet done dressing her- 
self marvellously : she was at Court on Sunday in a 
gown and petticoat of red flannel. The same day the 
Guerchys made a dinner for her, and invited Lord and 
Lady Hyde, the Forbes's, and her other particular 
friends : in the morning she sent word she was to 
go out of town, but as soon as dinner was over, 
arrived at Madame de Guerchy's, and said she had 
been at Court." 

On February 14th, he adds in the same letter: 

" The new Assembly Room at Almack's was opened 
the night before last, and they say is very magnificent, 
but it was empty ; half the town is ill with colds, and 
many were afraid to go, as the house is scarcely built 
yet. Almack advertised that it was built with hot 
bricks and boiling water — think what a rage there must 



92 A knack's. 

be for public places, if this notice, instead of terrifying, 
could draw anybody thither. They tell me the ceilings 
were dropping with wet — but can you believe me, when 
I assure you the Duke of Cumberland was there ? — 
Nay, had had a levee in the morning, and went to the 
Opera before the assembly ! There is a vast flight of 
steps, and he was forced to rest two or three times. If 
he dies of it, — and how should he not ? — it will sound 
very silly when Hercules or Theseus ask him what he 
died of, to reply, ' I caught my death on a damp stair- 
case at a new club-room.' " 

The reader will be inclined to wonder how, with so 
many distractions, Walpole found time for all this 
letter-writing, and still more how he managed to come 
before the public as an author. His, however, was the 
pen of an extremely ready writer, and, when not other- 
wise engaged, he plied it with unwearied diligence. 
This appears in the following letter to Cole, the Cam- 
bridge antiquary, in which Horace gives an account of 
the origin and composition of his well-known romance. 
The letter shows also the writer's love of collecting and 
designing curiosities : 

" Strawberry Hill, March 9, 1765. 

" I had time to write but a short note with the ' Castle 
of Otranto,' as your messenger called on me at four 
o'clock, as I was going to dine abroad. Your partiality 
to me and Strawberry have, I hope, inclined you to 
excuse the wildness of the story. You will even have 



The Castle of Otranto. 93 

found some traits to put you in mind of this place. 
When you read of the picture quitting its panel, did not 
you recollect the portrait of Lord Falkland, all in white, 
in my Gallery ? Shall I even confess to you, what was 
the origin of this romance ! I waked one morning, in 
the beginning of last June, from a dream, of which, all 
I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an 
ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled 
like mine with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost 
bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in 
armour. In the evening I sat down, and began to write, 
without knowing in the least what I intended to say or 
relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond 
of it — add, that I was very glad to think of anything, 
rather than politics. In short, I was so engrossed with 
my tale, which I completed in less than two months, 
that one evening, I wrote from the time I had drunk my 
tea, about six o'clock, till half an hour after one in the 
morning, when my hand and fingers were so weary, 
that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but 
left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a 
paragraph. You will laugh at my earnestness ; but if 
I have amused you, by retracing with any fidelity the 
manners of ancient days, I am content, and give you 
leave to think me as idle as you please. . . . 

" When you go into Cheshire, and upon your ramble, 
may I trouble you with a commission ? but about which 
you must promise me not to go a step out of your way. 
Mr. Bateman has got a cloister at Old Windsor, fur- 
nished with ancient wooden chairs, most of them trian- 



94 Plans for a Bower. 

gular, but all of various patterns, and carved and turned 
in the most uncouth and whimsical forms. He picked 
them up one by one, for two, three, five, or six shillings 
a-piece from different farm-houses in Herefordshire. I 
have long envied and coveted them. There may be 
such in poor cottages, in so neighbouring a county as 
Cheshire. I should not grudge any expense for pur- 
chase or carriage ; and should be glad even of a couple 
such for my cloister here. When you are copying 
inscriptions in a churchyard in any village, think of 
me, and step into the first cottage you see — but don't 
take further trouble than that. . . . 

" My bower is determined, but not at all what it is to 
be. Though I write romances, I cannot tell how to 
build all that belongs to them. Madame Danois, in the 
Fairy Tales, used to tapestry them with jonquils ; but as 
that furniture will not last above a fortnight in the year, 
I shall prefer something more huckaback. I have de- 
cided that the outside shall be of treillage, which, how- 
ever, I shall not commence, till I have again seen some 
of old Louis's old-fashioned Galantcries at Versailles. 
Rosamond's bower, you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, 
was a labyrinth : but as my territory will admit of a very 
short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habita- 
tion : though a bower is very different from an arbour, 
and must have more chambers than one. In short, I 
both know, and don't know, what it should be. I am 
almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade 
through his allegories, and drawling stanzas, to get at a 
picture. But, good night ! you see how one gossips, 



A Late Dinner. 95 

when one is alone, and at quiet on one's own dunghill ! 
— Well ! it may be trifling ; yet it is such trifling as 
Ambition never is happy enough to know ! Ambition 
orders palaces, but it is Content that chats for a page or 
two over a bower." 

A large part of Walpole's correspondence was de- 
spatched at night after his return from the theatre or a 
reception. His habits were late. He was a late riser, 
and he often played cards till two or three o'clock in the 
morning. Whist he disliked, but gave himself to faro, 
while that game was in vogue, and afterwards to loo, with 
all the fervour of a devotee. But when not thus occu- 
pied, the hours observed by the fashionable world 
allowed him to retire early to his desk. How different 
those hours were then from what they now are, may be 
gathered from Walpole's amusing sketch of a retarded 
dinner, at which he was a sufferer, in 1765 : 

" Now for my disaster ; you will laugh at it, though 
it was woful to me. I was to dine at Northumberland- 
house, and went a little after hour : there I found the 
Countess, Lady Betty Mackenzie, Lady Strafford ; my 
Lady Finlater, who was never out of Scotland before ; 
a tall lad of fifteen, her son ; Lord Drogheda, and Mr. 
Worseley. At five, arrived Mr. Mitchell, who said the 
Lords had begun to read the Poor-bill, which would 
take at least two hours, and perhaps would debate it 
afterwards. We concluded dinner would be called for, 
it not being very precedented for ladies to wait for 
gentlemen : — no such thing. Six o'clock came, — seven 



96 A Late Dinner. 

o'clock came, — our coaches came, — well ! we sent them 
away, and excuses were we were engaged. Still the 
Countess's heart did not relent, nor uttered a syllable of 
apology. We wore out the wind and the weather, the 
Opera and the Play, Mrs. Cornelys's and Almack's, and 
every topic that would do in a formal circle. We 
hinted, represented — in vain. The clock struck eight : 
my Lady, at last, said, she would go and order dinner ; 
but it was a good half-hour before it appeared. We 
then sat down to a table for fourteen covers : but 
instead of substantials, there was nothing but a pro- 
fusion of plates striped red, green, and yellow, gilt 
plate, blacks and uniforms ! My Lady Finlater, who 
had never seen these embroidered dinners, nor dined 
after three, was famished. The first course stayed 
as long as possible, in hopes of the Lords : so did 
the second. The dessert at last arrived, and the 
middle dish was actually set on when Lord Finlater and 
Mr. Mackay arrived! — would you believe it? — the 
dessert was remanded, and the whole first course 
brought back again ! — Stay, I have not done : — just as 
this second first course had done its duty, Lord 
Northumberland, Lord Strafford, and Mackenzie came 
in, and the whole began a third time ! Then the second 
course and the dessert ! I thought we should have 
dropped from our chairs with fatigue and fumes ! 
When the clock struck eleven, we were asked to return 
to the drawing-room, and drink tea and coffee, but 
I said I was engaged to supper, and came home to 
bed." 



An Idle Life. 97 

A few weeks later he laments his idle life in a letter 
to Lady Hervey : 

" It is scandalous, at my age, to have been carried 
backwards and forwards to balls and suppers and parties 
by very young people, as I was all last week. My reso- 
lutions of growing old and staid are admirable : I wake 
with a sober plan, and intend to pass the day with my 
friends — then comes the Duke cf Richmond, and hurries 
me down to Whitehall to dinner — then the Duchess of 
Grafton sends for me to loo in Upper Grosvenor Street 
— before I can get thither, I am begged to step to 
Kensington, to give Mrs. Anne Pitt my opinion about a 
bow-window — after the loo, I am to march back to 
Whitehall to supper — and after that, am to walk with 
Miss Pelham on the terrace till two in the mon.ing, 
because it is moonlight and her chair is not come. All 
this does not help my morning laziness ; and, by the 
time I have breakfasted, fed my birds and my squirrels, 
and dressed, there is an auction ready. In short, 
Madam, this was my life last week, and is I think every 
week, with the addition of forty episodes." 

Of course, this confession was not intended to be read 
quite seriously. It is to be taken with two grains of 
allowance, one for humour, the other for affectation. 
It was the writer's pleasure to overact the part of an 
idle fine gentleman. But we may fairly conclude from 
the last two extracts that five o'clock was the dinner- 
hour of extreme fashion at this time. It would seem 
that the customary hour was three even with people of 

7 



98 Social Usages. 

rank, and that in the greatest houses it was usual to 
serve supper. When Horace could escape from the 
loo-table in Upper Grosvenor Street, had no engage- 
ment to supper, and was not forced to pace Whitehall 
Terrace with a belated spinster till two in the morning, 
he was able to be at home and in bed — or at work with 
his books or his pen — by eleven o'clock. 



The Gout. 99 



CHAPTER V, 

The Gout— Visits to Paris. — Bath. — John Wesley. — Bad Weather. 
— English Summers. — Quitting Parliament. — Madame du 
Deffand. — Human Vanity.— The Banks of the Thames. — A 
Subscription Masquerade.— Extravagance of the Age. — The Pan- 
theon. — Visiting Stowe with Princess Amelia. — George Montagu. 
— The Countess of Ossory. — Powder-Mills Blown up at Houn- 
slow. — Distractions of Business and Pleasure. 

Walpole's acquaintance with the gout began before he 
had reached his fortieth year. Its earliest approaches 
he received without much discomposure. His chief 
reason, he said, for objecting to " this alderman dis- 
temper " was that he could show no title to it. " If 
either my father or mother had had it, I should not 
dislike it so much. I am herald enough to approve it if 
descended genealogically ; but it is an absolute upstart 
in me, and what is more provoking, I had trusted to my 
great abstinence for keeping me from it : but thus it is, 
if I had any gentleman-like virtue, as patriotism or 
loyalty, I might have got something by them ; I had 
nothing but that beggarly virtue temperance, and she 
had not interest enough to keep me from a fit of the 
gout." By degrees, however, the attacks of his enemy 

LOFC. 7 ~ 2 



ioo Visits to Paris and Bath. 

became too severe to be dismissed with pleasantries 
like these. In the summer of 1765, he was prostrated 
by a seizure which held him prisoner for several weeks. 
On recovering about the middle of September, he 
undertook a journey to Paris, partly to recruit his 
strength, and partly in execution of a long-formed 
design. He remained in the French capital till the 
following spring, mixing much in the society of the 
place, and doing ample justice to the wit and grace of 
Frenchwomen, but shrinking from and detesting the 
French philosophers.* During this period was formed 
his friendship with Madame du Deffand, his " dear old 
blind woman," as he often calls her, with whom, after his 
return to England, he maintained a weekly correspon- 
dence for the rest of her life. Altogether, he derived so 
much pleasure from his visit, that he repeated it every 
alternate summer down to that of 1771 ; and we find 
him in Paris again in 1775. 

Pie had another illness in the middle of 1766, for 
which he tried the Bath waters ; but Bath proved 
not at all to his taste, though he met the great Lord 
Chatham there, and many other persons of distinc- 
tion. " These watering-places," he says, " that mimic 
a capital, and add vulgarisms and familiarities of their 
own, seem to me like abigails in cast gowns, and I am 
not young enough to take up with either." Finding 

* " Their women are the first in the world in everything but 
beauty ; sensible, agreeable, and infinitely informed. The philo- 
sophes, except Buffon, are solemn, arrogant, dictatorial coxcombs 
— I need not say superlatively disagreeable." — Waliole to Mann. 



John Wesley. 101 

himself dull at Bath, he attended a Wesleyan service, ot 
which he gives a somewhat flippant description : 

" My health advances faster than my amusement. 
However, I have been at one opera, Mr. Wesley's. 
They have boys and girls with charming voices, that 
sing hymns, in parts, to Scotch ballad tunes ; but in- 
deed so long, that one would think they were already 
in eternity, and knew how much time they had before 
them. The chapel is very neat, with true Gothic 
windows (yet I am not converted) ; but I was glad to 
see that luxury is creeping in upon them before perse- 
cution : they have very neat mahogany stands for 
branches, and brackets of the same in taste. At the 
upper end is a broad hautpas of four steps, advancing in 
the middle : at each end of the broadest part are two of 
my eagles,* with red cushions for the parson and clerk. 
Behind them rise three more steps, in the midst of 
which is a third eagle for pulpit. Scarlet armed chairs 
to all three. On either hand, a balcony for elect ladies. 
The rest of the congregation sit on forms. Behind the 
pit, in a dark niche, is a plain table within rails; so 
you see the throne is for the apostle. Wesley is a lean 
elderly man, fresh-coloured, his hair smoothly combed, 
but with a soupcon of curl at the ends. Wondrous clean, 
but as evidently an actor as Garrick. He spoke his 
sermon, but so fast, and with so little accent, that I am 
sure he has often uttered it, for it was like a lesson. 
There were parts and eloquence in it ; but towards the 

° He alludes to his Roman Eagle at Strawberry Hill. 



102 Bad Weather, 

end he exalted his voice, and acted very ugly enthusi- 
asm ; decried learning, and told stories, like Latimer, 
of the fool of his college, who said, ' I thanks God for 
everything.' Except a few from curiosity, and some 
honourable women, the congregation was very mean. 
There was a Scotch Countess of Buchan, who is carry- 
ing a pure rosy vulgar face to heaven, and who asked 
Miss Rich, if that was the author of the poets. I believe 
she meant me and the Noble Authors." 

Walpole was in a peevish humour about this time. 
He was out of health, and dispirited besides by an 
apprehension that the climate of Twickenham did not 
suit him. Thus he writes from Strawberry Hill : 
" What afflicts me most is, that I am persuaded that 
this place is too damp for me. I revive after being in 
London an hour, like a member of Parliament's wife. 
It will be a cruel fate, after having laid out so much 
money here, and building upon it as the nest of my old 
age, if I am driven from it by bad health." Unfavour- 
able weather seems to have been in some measure the 
cause of these fears, and of the writer's disordered con- 
dition. Though the harvest-time of 1766 was fine, the 
crops, we are told, had been spoilt by previous rains, 
and the years which followed were a cycle of wet and 
cold seasons. Walpole grumbles at the weather with 
English vigour and French vivacity. Thus he writes to 
Montagu, in June, 1768: 

" I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached 
us. It began here but on Monday last, and then rained 
near eight-and-forty hours without intermission. My 



English Summers. 103 

poor hay has not a dry thread to its back. I have had 
a fire these three days. In short, every summer one 
lives in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have found 
the reason : it is because we will affect to have a summer, 
and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets 
learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the 
terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves 
purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore 
throats and agues with attempting to realize these 
visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites 
Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and never 
a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. 
Zephyr is a north-east wind, that makes Damon button 
up to the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red 
and blue ; and then they cry, This is a bad summer ! 
as if we ever had any other. The best sun we have is 
made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to 
reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting 
over foreign trees, and making our houses clamber up 
hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would 
laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable, 
unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick 
warm wood at your back ! Taste is too freezing a com- 
modity for us, and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion 
again. — There is indeed a natural warmth in this 
country, which, as you say, I am very glad not to enjoy 
any longer ; I mean the hot-house in St. Stephen's chapel. 
My own sagacity makes me very vain, though there was 
very little merit in it. I had seen so much of all parties, 
that I had little esteem left for any; it is most indiffer- 



104 Quitting Parliament. 

ent to me who is in or who is out, or which is set in the 
pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield. I see the 
country going to ruin, and no man with brains enough 
to save it. That is mortifying ; but what signifies who 
has the undoing it ? I seldom suffer myself to think on 
this subject : my patriotism could do no good, and my 
philosophy can make me be at peace." 

The concluding lines of the above extract refer to the 
writer's recent retirement from the House of Commons. 
In the spring of the preceding year, Walpole had an- 
nounced that he should not again ask the suffrages of 
the Lynn burgesses, stating as his reasons the declining 
state of his health and his wish to withdraw from all 
public business ; and though his health had improved in 
the interval, the General Election of 1768 found him 
fixed in his decision. Whatever may have been the 
real motives of his conduct, there is no indication in his 
Letters that he ever regretted the course he had taken. 
In June, 1769, he writes from Strawberry Hill: " I am 
come hither for two months, very busy with finishing 
my round tower, which has stood still these five years, 
and with an enchanting new cottage that I have built, 
and other little works. In August, I shall go to Paris 
for six weeks. In short, I am delighted with having 
bid adieu to Parliament and politics, and with doing 
nothing but what I like all the year round." But the 
season was again rainy. A few days later, we have a 
letter to Cole, who was then settled at Waterbeach, 
near Cambridge : 



Madame du Deffand. 105 

"Strawberry Hill, Monday, June 26, 1769. 

" Oh ! yes, yes, I shall like Thursday or Friday, 6th 
or 7th, exceedingly ; I shall like your staying with me 
two days exceedinglier ; and longer exceedingliest : and 
I will carry you back to Cambridge on our pilgrimage to 
Ely. But I should not at all like to be catched in the 
glories of an installation,* and find myself a doctor, 
before I knew where I was. It will be much more 
agreeable to find the whole caput asleep, digesting turtle, 
dreaming of bishoprics, and humming old catches of 
Anacreon, and scraps of Corelli. I wish Mr. Gray may 
not be set out for the north ; which is rather the case 
than setting out for the summer. We have no summers, 
I think, but what we raise, like pine-apples, by fire. 
My hay is an absolute water-souchy , and teaches me how 
to feel for you. You are quite in the right to sell your 
fief in Marshland. I should be glad if you would take 
one step more, and quit Marshland. We live, at least, 
on te.ra firma in this part of the world, and can saunter 
out without stilts. Item, we do not wade into pools, 
and call it going upon the water, and get sore throats. 
I trust yours is better ; but I recollect this is not the 
first you have complained of. Pray be not incorrigible, 
but come to shore." 

At the end of August he is in Paris with Madame du 
Deffand. " My dear old woman," he writes, " is in 
better health than when I left her, and her spirits so 

* The installation of the Duke of Grafton as Chancellor of the 
University of Cambridge. Gray wrote the Ode for the occasion. 



io6 Madame du Deffand. 

Increased, that I tell her she will go mad with age. 
When they ask her how old she is, she answers, ' J'ai 
soixante et mille ans.' " In a letter written to George 
Montagu a week afterwards, we have a description of 
this true Frenchwoman : 

" Your two letters flew here together in a breath. I 
shall answer the article of business first. I could cer- 
tainly buy many things for you here, that you would 
like, the reliques of the last age's magnificence; but 
since my Lady Holdernesse invaded the Custom-House 
with an hundred and fourteen gowns, in the reign of 
that two-penny monarch George Grenville, the ports 
are so guarded, that not a soul but a smuggler can 
smuggle anything into England ; and I suppose you 
would not care to pay seventy-five per cent, on second- 
hand commodities. All I transported three years ago, 
was conveyed under the canon of the Duke of Rich- 
mond. I have no interest in our present representa- 
tive ; nor if I had, is he returning. Plate, of all earthly 
vanities, is the most impassable : it is not counterband 
in its metallic capacity, but totally so in its personal : 
and the officers of the Custom-House not being philoso- 
phers enough to separate the substance from the super- 
ficies, brutally hammer both to pieces, and return you — 
only the intrinsic ; a compensation which you, who are 
no member of Parliament, would not, I trow, be satis- 
fied with. Thus I doubt you must retrench your 
generosity to yourself, unless you can contract it into 
an Elzevir size, and be content with anything one can 
bring in one's pocket. 



Madame du Dcffand. 107 

" My dear old friend was charmed with your mention 
of her, and made me vow to return you a thousand 
compliments. She cannot conceive why you will not 
step hither. Feeling in herself no difference between 
the spirits of twenty-three and seventy-three, she thinks 
Ihere is no impediment to doing whatever one will, but 
the want of eyesight. If she had that, I am persuaded 
no consideration would prevent her making me a visit 
at Strawberry Hill. She makes songs, sings them, and 
remembers all that ever were made ; and, having lived 
from the most agreeable to the most reasoning age, has 
all that was amiable in the last, all that is sensible in 
this, without the vanity of the former, or the pedant 
impertinence of the latter. I have heard her dispute 
with all sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, and 
never knew her in the wrong. She humbles the learned, 
sets right their disciples, and finds conversation for 
everybody. Affectionate as Madame de Sevigne, she 
has none of her prejudices, but a more universal taste ; 
and, with the most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her 
through a life of fatigue that would kill me, if I was to 
continue here. If we return by one in the morning 
from suppers in the country, she proposes driving to the 
Boulevard or to the Foire St. Ovide, because it is too 
early to go to bed. I had great difficulty last night to 
persuade her, though she was not well, not to sit up till 
between two and three for the comet ; for which purpose 
she had appointed an astronomer to bring his telescopes 
to the president Henault's, as she thought it would 
amuse me. In short, her goodness to me is so excessive, 



108 Human Vanity. 

that I feel unashamed at producing my withered person 
in a round of diversions, which I have quitted at home. 
I tell a story; I do feel ashamed, and sigh to be in my 
quiet castle and cottage ; but it costs me many a pang, 
when I reflect that I shall probably never have resolu- 
tion enough to take another journey to see this best and 
sincerest of friends, who loves me as much as my mother 
did ! but it is idle to look forward — what is next year ? 
— a bubble that may burst for her or me, before even 
the flying year can hurry to the end of its alma- 
nack ! . . . 

" Adieu, my t'other dear old friend ! I am sorry to 
say, I see you almost as seldom as I do Madame du 
Deffand. However, it is comfortable to reflect that we 
have not changed to each other for some five-and-thirty 
years, and neither you nor I haggle about naming so 
ancient a term. I made a visit yesterday to the Abbess 
of Panthemont, General Oglethorpe's niece, and no 
chicken. I inquired after her mother, Madame de 
Mezieres, and thought I might to a spiritual votary to 
immortality venture to say, that her mother must be 
very old ; she interrupted me tartly, and said, no, her 
mother had been married extremely young. Do but 
think of its seeming important to a saint to sink a 
wrinkle of her own through an iron grate ! Oh ! we are 
ridiculous animals ; and if angels have any fun in them, 
how we must divert them." 

Once more in England, he announces his return to 
the same friend : 



The Banks of the Thames. 109 

" Strawberry Hill, Oct. 16, 1769. 

" I arrived at my own Louvre last Wednesday night, 
and am now at my Versailles. Your last letter reached 
me but two days before I left Paris, for I have been an 
age at Calais and upon the sea. I could execute no 
commission for you, and, in truth, you gave me no 
explicit one ; but I have brought you a bit of china, and 
beg you will be content with a little present, instead of 
a bargain. Said china is, or will be soon, in the 
Custom-House ; but I shall have it, I fear, long before 
you come to London. . . . 

" I feel myself here like a swan, that, after living six 
weeks in a nasty pool upon a common, is got back into 
its own Thames. I do nothing but plume and clean 
myself, and enjoy the verdure and silent waves. Neat- 
ness and greenth are so essential in my opinion to the 
country, that in France, where I see nothing but chalk 
and dirty peasants, I seem in a terrestrial purgatory 
that is neither town nor country. The face of England 
is so beautiful, that I do not believe Tempe or Arcadia 
were half so rural ; for both lying in hot climates, must 
have wanted the turf of our lawns. It is unfortunate to 
have so pastoral a taste, when I want a cane more than 
a crook. We are absurd creatures ; at twenty, I loved 
nothing but London." 

The winter of 1769-70 Walpole spent as usual in 
London. He now moralizes on masquerades in the 
tone of an ancient : 

" It is very lucky, seeing how much of the tiger enters 



no A Subscription Masquerade. 

into the human composition, that there should be a 
good dose of the monkey too. If iEsop had not lived 
so many centuries before the introduction of mas- 
querades and operas, he would certainly have antici- 
pated my observation, and worked it up into a capital 
fable. As we still trade upon the stock of the ancients, 
we seldom deal in any other manufacture ; and, though 
nature, after new combinations, lets forth new charac- 
teristics, it is very rarely that they are added to the old 
fund ; else how could so striking a remark have escaped 
being made, as mine, on the joint ingredients of tiger 
and monkey ? In France the latter predominates, in 
England the former ; but, like Orozmades and Ari- 
manius, they get the better by turns. The bankruptcy 
in France, and the rigours of the new Comptroller- 
General, are half forgotten, in the expectation of a 
new opera at the new theatre. Our civil war* has been 
lulled to sleep by a Subscription Masquerade, for which 
the House of Commons literally adjourned yesterday. 
Instead of Fairfaxes and Crom wells, we have had a 
crowd of Henry the Eighths, Wolseys, Vandykes, and 
Harlequins ; and because Wilkes was not mask enough, 
we had a man dressed like him, with a visor, in imita- 
tion of his squint, and a Cap of Liberty on a pole. In 
short, sixteen or eighteen young lords have given the 
town a Masquerade ; and politics, for the last fortnight, 
were forced to give way to habit-makers. The ball was 
last night at Soho ; and, if possible, was more magnifi- 

* The proceedings of the House of Commons against Wilkes 
had just producM a Ministerial crisis. 



A Subscription Masquerade. 1 1 1 

cent than the King of Denmark's. The Bishops 
opposed : he of London formally remonstrated to the 
King, who did not approve it, but could not help him. 
The consequence was, that four divine vessels belonging 
to the holy fathers, alias their wives, were at this Mas- 
querade. Monkey again ! A fair widow,* who once 
bore my whole name, and now bears half of it, was 
there, with one of those whom the newspapers call 
great personages — he dressed like Edward the Fourth, she 
like Elizabeth Woodville, in grey and pearls, with a black 
veil. Methinks it was not very difficult to find out the 
meaning of those masks. 

" As one of my ancient passions, formerly, was Mas- 
querades, I had a large trunk of dresses by me. I 
dressed out a thousand young Conwayst and Cholmon- 
deleys,! and went with more pleasure to see them 
pleased than when I formerly delighted in that diver- 
sion myself. It has cost me a great headache, and I 
shall probably never go to another. A symptom ap- 
peared of the change that has happened in the people. 

" The mob was beyond all belief : they held flambeaux 
to the windows of every coach, and demanded to have 
the masks pulled off and put on at their pleasure, but 
with extreme good-humour and civility. I was with 
my Lady Hertford and two of her daughters, in their 
coach : the mob took me for Lord Hertford, and 

* Maria Walpole, Countess Dowager of Waldegrave, who had 
now secretly married William Henry, Duke of Gloucester. 

f Sons of Francis, Earl of Hertford, Mr. Walpole's cousin- 
german . 

% Mr. Walpole's nephews. 



r 1 2 Extravagance of the Age. 

huzzaed and blessed me ! One fellcw cried out, ' Are 
you for Wilkes ?' another said, ' You fool, what has 
Wilkes to do with a Masquerade ?' 

" In good truth, that stock is fallen very low. The 
Court has recovered a majority of seventy-five in the 
House of Commons ; and the party has succeeded so ill 
in the Lords, that my Lord Chatham has betaken him- 
self to the gout, and appears no more. What Wilkes 
may do at his enlargement in April, I don't know, but 
his star is certainly much dimmed. The distress of 
France, the injustice they have been induced to commit 
on public credit, immense bankruptcies, and great 
bankers hanging and drowning themselves, are comfort- 
able objects in our prospect ; for one tiger is charmed if 
another tiger loses his tail." 

Again, he descants on the extravagance of the 
age: 

" What do you think of a winter-Ranelagh* erecting 
in Oxford Road, at the expense of sixty thousand 
pounds ? The new Bank, including the value of the 
ground, and of the houses demolished to make room for 
it, will cost three hundred thousand ; and erected, as 
my Lady TownleyJ* says, by sober citizens too ! I have 
touched before to you on the incredible profusion of our 
young men of fashion. I know a younger brother who 
literally gives a flower-woman half a guinea every morn- 
ing for a bunch of roses for the nosegay in his button-hole. 
There has lately been an auction of stuffed birds; and, 

* The Pantheon. 

f In the comedy of " The Provoked Husband." 



Extravagance of the Age. 1 1 3 

as natural history is in fashion, there are physicians and 
others who paid forty and fifty guineas for a single 
Chinese pheasant : you may buy a live one for five. 
After this, it is not extraordinary that pictures should 
be dear. We have at present three exhibitions. One 
West,* who paints history in the taste of Poussin, gets 
three hundred pounds for a piece not too large to hang 
over a chimney. He has merit, but is hard and heavy, 
and far unworthy of such prices. The rage to see these 
exhibitions is so great, that sometimes one cannot pass 
through the streets where they are. But it is incredible 
what sums are raised by mere exhibitions of anything — 
a new fashion ; and to enter at which you pay a shilling 
or half-a-crown. Another rage is for prints of English 
portraits : I have been collecting them above thirty 
years, and originally never gave for a mezzotinto above 
one or two shillings- The lowest are now a crown ; 
most, from half a guinea to a guinea. Lately, I assisted 
a clergyman [Granger] in compiling a catalogue of 
them ; since the publication, scarce heads in books, not 
worth threepence, will sell for five guineas. Then we 
have Etruscan vases, made of earthenware, in Stafford- 
shire, [by Wedgwood] from two to five guineas : and 
or moulu, never made here before, which succeeds so 
well, that a teakettle, which the inventor offered for one 
hundred guineas, sold by auction for one hundred and 
thirty. In short, we are at the height of extravagance 
and improvements, for we do improve rapidly in taste as 
well as in the former. I cannot say so much for our 

* Benjamin West, afterwards, at Sir Joshua's death, President of 
the Royal Academy of Arts. 

8 



r 1 4 The Pantheon, 

genius. Poetry is gone to bed, or into our prose ; we 
are like the Romans in that too. If we have the arts of 
the Antonines, — we have the fustian also." 

Our ancestors seem to have been much impressed 
with the splendour of the London Pantheon. Walpole 
recurs to the subject : " If we laugh at the French, they 
stare at us. Our enormous luxury and expense astonish 
them. I carried their Ambassador and a Comte de 
Levi the other morning to see the new winter-Ranelagh 
[the Pantheon] in Oxford Road, which is almost 
finished. It amazed me myself. Imagine Balbec in 
all its glory ! The pillars are of artificial giallo antico. 
The ceilings, even of the passages, are of the most 
beautiful stuccos in the best taste of grotesque. The 
ceilings of the ball-rooms, and the panels, painted like 
Raphael's loggias in the Vatican. A dome like the 
Pantheon, glazed. Monsieur de Guisnes said to me, 
' Ce n'est qu'a Londres qu'on peut faire tout cela.' " 
What a sermon would our moralist have preached, could 
he have foreseen that, in the reign of George Ill's grand- 
daughter, this English Balbec would become a reposi- 
tory for cheap wines ! 

In July, 1770, Walpole received a command to attend 
the Princess Amelia on a visit to Stowe. He describes 
what occurred to George Montagu : 

" The party passed off much better than I expected. 
A Princess at the head of a very small set for five days 
together did not promise well. However, she was very 
good-humoured and easv. and dispensed with a large 



Princess Amelia at St owe. 115 

quantity of etiquette. Lady Temple is good-nature 
itself, my Lord was very civil, Lord Besborough is made 
to suit all sorts of people, Lady Mary Coke respects 
royalty too much not to be very condescending, Lady 
Anne Howard* and Mrs. Middleton filled up the draw- 
ing-room, or rather made it out, and I was so deter- 
mined to carry it off as well as I could, and happened 
to be in such good spirits, and took such care to avoid 
politics, that we laughed a great deal, and had not a 
cloud the whole time. 

" We breakfasted at half an hour after nine ; but the 
Princess did not appear till it was finished ; then we 
walked in the garden, or drove about it in cabriolets, till 
it was time to dress ; dined at three, which, though 
properly proportioned to the smallness of company to 
avoid ostentation, lasted a vast while, as the Princess 
eats and talks a great deal ; then again into the garden 
till past seven, when we came in, drank tea and coffee, 
and played at pharaoh till ten, when the Princess 
retired, and we went to supper, and before twelve to 
bed. You see there was great sameness and little 
vivacity in all this. It was a little broken by fishing, 
and going round the park one of the mornings ; but, in 
reality, the number of buildings and variety of scenes in 
the garden, made each day different from the rest, and 
my meditations on so historic a spot prevented my 
being tired. Every acre brings to one's mind some 
instance of the parts or pedantry, of the taste or want 

* Lady Anne Howard, daughter of Henry, fourth Earl, and sister 
oi Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle. 

8—2 



n6 Princess Amelia at Stowe. 

of taste, of the ambition or love of fame, or greatness 01 
miscarriages, of those that have inhabited, decorated, 
planned, or visited the place. Pope, Congreve, Van- 
brugh, Kent, Gibbs, Lord Cobham, Lord Chesterfield, 
the mob of nephews, the Lytteltons, Grenvilles, Wests, 
Leonidas Glover, and Wilkes, the late Prince of Wales, 
the King of Denmark, Princess Amelia, and the proud 
monuments of Lord Chatham's services, now enshrined 
there, then anathematised there, and now again com- 
manding there, with the Temple of Friendship,* like 
the Temple of Janus, sometimes open to war, and 
sometimes shut up in factious cabals — all these images 
crowd upon one's memory, and add visionary personages 
to the charming scenes, that are so enriched with fanes 
and temples, that the real prospects are little less than 
visions themselves. 

" On Wednesday night, a small Vauxhall was acted 
for us at the grotto in the Elysian fields, which was 
illuminated with lamps, as were the thicket and two 
little barks on the lake. With a little exaggeration, I 
could make you believe that nothing ever was so de- 
lightful. The idea was really pretty; but, as my feel- 
ings have lost something of their romantic sensibility, 
I did not quite enjoy such an entertainment al fresco so 
much as I should have done twenty years ago. The 
evening was more than cool, and the destined spot any- 
thing but dry. There were not half lamps enough, and 

* The Temple of Friendship, like the ruins in the Campo Vaccino, 
is reduced to a single column at Stowe. — Walpole to Cranford, bth 
March, 1766. 



Princess Amelia at Stowe. 117 

no music but an ancient militia-man, who played cruelly 
on a squeaking tabor and pipe. As our procession 
descended the vast flight of steps into the garden, in 
which was assembled a crowd of people from Bucking- 
ham and the neighbouring villages to see the Princess 
and the show, the moon shining very bright, I could not 
help laughing as I surveyed our troop, which, instead of 
tripping lightly to such an Arcadian entertainment, were 
hobbling down by the balustrades, wrapped up in cloaks 
and great-coats, for fear of catching cold. The Earl, 
you know, is bent double, the Countess very lame ; I 
am a miserable walker, and the Princess, though as 
strong as a Brunswick lion, makes no figure in going 
down fifty stone stairs. Except Lady Anne, and by 
courtesy Lady Mary, we were none of us young enough 
for a pastoral. We supped in the grotto, which is as 
proper to this climate as a sea-coal fire would be in the 
dog-days at Tivoli. 

" But the chief entertainment of the week, at least 
what was so to the Princess, is an arch, which Lord 
Temple has erected to her honour m the most enchant- 
ing of all picturesque scenes. It is inscribed on one 
side, ' Amelia Sophia, Aug.,' and has a medallion of 
her on the other. It is placed on an eminence at the 
top of the Elysian fields, in a grove of orange-trees. 
You come to it on a sudden, and are startled with 
delight on looking through it : you at once see, through 
a glade, the river winding at the bottom ; from which a 
thicket rises, arched over with trees, but opened, and 
discovering a hillock full of hay-cocks, beyond which in 



1 1 8 George Montagu. 

front is the Palladian bridge, and again over that a 
larger hill crowned with the castle. It is a tall land- 
scape framed by the arch and the overbowering trees, 
and comprehending more beauties of light, shade, 
and buildings, than any picture of Albano I ever saw. 

" Between the flattery and the prospect, the Princess 
was really in Elysium : she visited her arch four and 
five times every day, and could not satiate herself with 
it. The statues of Apollo and the Muses stand on each 
side of the arch. One day she found in Apollo's hand 
the following lines, which I had written for her, and 
communicated to Lord Temple." 

We spare our readers the verses. The letter from 
which we have been quoting is one of the last of Wal- 
pole's letters to Montagu. A coolness arose the same 
year between the two friends, either without a cause, or 
for some cause which has not been explained, and con- 
tinued until Montagu's death in 1780.* That Walpole 
regretted the breach his tone in referring to it shows, 
and his readers have reason to regret it likewise, for his 
letters to Montagu display more warmth of feeling and 

* ' He dropped me, partly from politics and partly from caprice, 
for we never had any quarrel : but he was grown an excessive 
humourist, and had shed almost all his friends as well as me. He 
had parts, and infinite vivacity and originality till of late years ; and 
it grieved me much that he had changed towards me after a friend- 
ship of between thirty and forty years.' This is Walpole's account 
written to Cole the day after Montagu's death. But Montagu's last 
letter to Walpole, dated October 6, 1770, is cordial and even 
affectionate in tone ; while in Walpole's preceding letter there are 
some signs of pique, and the letter from Horace which ends the 
correspondence is both short and cold. 



Lady Ossory. \ 19 

simplicity of style than any others in his published 
correspondence. A few months before Montagu drops 
out of sight, Lady Ossory appears in the list of the ladies 
to whom Walpole addressed sprightly letters in a strain 
of oddly mingled ceremony and familiarity. He had 
been on terms of friendship with her before her divorce 
from the Duke of Grafton ; in his letters of that period 
he frequently refers to her as his Duchess, and speaks 
of following her and loo all over the kingdom. There 
can be no doubt that he often wrote to her at that time, 
but the first of his published letters to her is dated after 
her marriage with Lord Ossory. Here are two letters 
to her, one describing the damage done to his castle by 
an explosion of powder-mills at Hounslow, the other 
the sea of troubles into which he was plunged when his 
nephew, Lord Orford, was seized with insanity. The first 
letter was be^un in London on the 5th January, 1772 : 

" I was waked very early this morning, by half an 
hour after nine ; (I mean this for flattery, for Mr. Crau- 
ford says your ladyship does not rise till one) ; by the 
way, I was in the middle of a charming dream. I 
thought I was in the King's Library in Paris, and in a 
gallery full of books of prints, containing nothing but 
fetes and decorations of scenery. I took down a long 
Roll, on which was painted, on vellum, all the cere- 
monies of the present reign : there was the young King 
walking to his coronation ; the Regent before, who I 
thought was alive. I said to him, your Royal Highness 
has a great air ; he seemed extremely flattered, when 
the house shook as if the devil were come for him. I 



120 Explosion of Poivder- Mills. 

had scarce recovered my vexation at being so disturbed, 
when the door of my room shook so violently that I 
thought somebody was breaking it open, though I knew 
it was not locked. It was broad daylight, but I did not 
know that housebreaking might not be still improving. I 
cried out ' Who is there ?' Nobody answered. In less 
than another minute, the door rattled and shook still 
more robberaceously. I call again — no reply. I rung : 
the housemaid ran in as pale as white ashes, if you ever 
saw such, and cried, ' Goodness ! Sir, I am frightened 
out of my wits : there has been an earthquake !' Oh ! I 
believed her immediately. Philip [his valet] came in, 
and, being a Swiss philosopher, insisted it was only the 
wind. I sent him down to collect opinions in the 
street. He returned, and owned every body in this and 
the neighbouring streets were persuaded their houses 
had been breaking open ; or had ran out of them, think- 
ing there was an earthquake. Alas ! it was much 
worse ; for you know, Madam, our earthquakes are as 
harmless as a new-born child. At one, came in a courier 
from Margaret [his housekeeper] to tell me that five 
powder-mills had been blown up at Hounslow, at half 
an hour after nine this morning, had almost shook Mrs. 
Clive, and had broken parts or all of eight of my painted 
windows, besides other damage. This is a cruel misfor- 
tune : I don't know how I shall repair it ! I shall go down 
to-morrow, and on Thursday will finish my report. 

" Wednesday, 8th. 
" Well ! Madam, I am returned from my poor 
shattered castle, and never did it look so Gothic in its 



Explosion of Powder-Mills. 1 2 1 

born days. You would swear it had been besieged by 
the Presbyterians in the Civil Wars, and that, finding 
it impregnable, they had vented their holy malice on 
the painted glass. As this gunpowder-army passed on, 
it demolished Mr. Hindley's fine bow-window of ancient 
Scripture histories ; and only because your ladyship is 
my ally, broke the large window over your door, and 
wrenched off a lock in your kitchen. Margaret sits by 
the waters of Babylon, and weeps over Jerusalem. I 
shall pity those she shows the house to next summer, 
for her story is as long and deplorable as a chapter of 
casualties in ' Baker's Chronicle ;' yet she was not 
taken quite unprepared, for one of the Bantam hens 
crowed on Sunday morning, and the chandler's wife 
told her three weeks ago, when the barn was blown 
down, that ill-luck never comes single. She is, how- 
ever, very thankful that the China Room has escaped, 
and says, Heaven has always been the best creature in 
the world to her. I dare not tell her how many 
churches I propose to rob, to repair my losses." 

The second is dated : 

"Strawberry Hill, past midnight, June n, 1773. 

" Unless I borrow from my sleep, I can certainly 
have no time to please myself. I am this minute 
arrived here, Madam, and being the flower of chivalry, 
I sacrifice, like a true knight, the moments I steal from 
my rest to gallantry. Save me, or I shall become a 
solicitor in Chancery, unless business and fatigue over- 
set my head, and reduce me to my poor nephew's state. 
Indeed, I am half hurried out of my senses. Think of 



r22 Business and Pleasure. 

me putting queries to lawyers, up to the ears in mort- 
gages, wills, settlements, and contingent remainders. 
My lawyer is sent away that I may give audience to the 
Honourable Mr. Manners, the genuine, if not the 
legitimate son of Lord William. He came civilly 
yesterday morning to ask me if he might not seize 
the pictures at Houghton, which he heard were worth 
threescore thousand pounds, for nine thousand he has 
lent Lord Orford. The vulture's throat gaped for them 
all — what a scene is opened ! Houghton will be a 
rookery of harpies — I doubt there are worse scenes to 
follow, and black transactions ! What occupation 
chalked out for an end of a life that I had calculated 
for tranquillity, and which gout and law are to divide 
between them ! 

" In the midst of this prospect must I keep up the 
tone of the world, go shepherdising with Macaronies, 
sit up at loo with my Lady Hertford, be witness to 
Miss Pelham's orgies, dine at villas, and give dinners at 
my own. 'Tis well my spirits and resolution have sur- 
vived my youth : you have heard how my mornings 
pass — now for the rest. Consultations of physicians, 
letters to Lady Orford, sent for to my brother, decent 
visits to my Court,* sup at Lady Powis's on Wednesday, 
drink tea with all the fashionable world at Mr. Fitzroy's 
farm on Thursday, blown by a north wind there into 
the house, and whisk back to Lady Hertford's; this 
morning to my brother's to hear of new bills, away to 
dine at , Muswell Hill, with the Beauclerks, and 

* He means Gloucester House. 



Business and Pleasure. 123 

florists and natural historians, Banks and Solanders ; 
return to town, step to ask a friend whether reversions 
of jointures can be left away, into my chaise and hither. 
To-morrow come two Frenchmen to dinner — on Mon- 
day, a man to sell me two acres immensely dear as a 
favour, — Philip [his valet] , I cannot help it, you must 
go and put him off; I have not a minute, I must go 
back to-morrow night to meet the lawyers at my 
brother's on Sunday morning. Margaret [his house- 
keeper] comes in. ' Sir, Lady Bingham desires you 
will dine with her at Hampton Court on Tuesday ;' I 
cannot. ' Sir, Captain What-d'ye-call'm has sent twice 
for a ticket to see the house ' — Don't plague me about 
tickets. ' Sir, a servant from Isleworth brought this 
parcel.' What on earth is in it ? — only printed pro- 
posals for writing the lives of all British writers, and a 
letter to tell me I could do it better than anybody, but. 
as I may not have time, Dr. Berkenhout proposes to do 
it, and will write mine into the bargain, if I will but 
be so good as to write it first and send it him, and 
give him advice for the conduct of his work, and point 
out materials, and furnish him with anecdotes. 

" My dear madam, what if you should send him this 
letter as a specimen of my life ! Alas, alas ! I have 
already lost my lilac tide. I have heard but one nightin- 
gale this year, and my farmer cut my hay last Tuesday 
morning without telling me, just as I was going to 
London. Is it to be borne ? O for the sang-froid of an 
Almackian, who pursues his delights, 

' Though in the jaws of ruin and codille !' " 



124 Lord Nunekam. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Lord Nuneham.— Madame de Se"vigne\ — Charles Fox. — Mrs. Clive 
and Cliveden. — Goldsmith and Garrick. — Dearth of News. — 
Madame de Trop. — A Bunch of Grapes. — General Election. — 
Perils by Land and Water. — Sir Horace Mann. — Lord Clive. — 
The History of Manners. — A Traveller from Lima. — The Scavoir 
Vivre Club. — Reflections on Life. — The Pretender's Happiness. 
— Paris Fashions. — Madame Du Deffand ill. — Growth of London. 
— Sir Joshua Reynolds. — Change in Manners. — Our Climate. 

The following letter is a specimen ot Horace's gossip- 
ing style at its best. It is addressed to Lord Nuneham, 
who was in Ireland with his father, Simon Earl Har- 
court, the then Lord-Lieutenant. Elsewhere Walpole 
salutes his correspondent as " Your O'Royal High- 
ness": 

"Strawberry Hill, Dec. 6, 1773. 
" I wanted an excuse for writing to you, my dear 
Lord, and your letter gives me an opportunity of thank- 
ing you ; yet that is not all I wanted to say. I would, 
if I had dared, have addressed myself to Lady Nune- 
ham, but I had not confidence enough, especially on so 
unworthy a subject as myself. Lady Temple, my 
friend, as well as that of Human Nature, has shown me 
some verses ; but alas ! how came such charming 



Maaame de Sivigni. 125 

poetry to be thrown away on so unmeritorious a topic? 
I don't know whether I ought to praise the lines most, 
or censure the object most. Voltaire makes the excel- 
lence of French poetry consist in the number of diffi- 
culties it vanquishes. Pope, who celebrated Lord 
Bolingbroke, could not have succeeded, did not suc- 
ceed, better; and yet I hope that, though a meaner 
subject, I am not so bad an one ! Well ! with all my 
humility, I cannot but be greatly nattered. Madame 
de Sevigne spread her leaf-gold over all her acquaint- 
ance, and made them shine ; I should not doubt of the 
same glory, when Lady Nuneham's poetry shall come 
to light, if my own works were but burnt at the same 
time ; but alas ! Coulanges' verses were preserved, and 
so may my writings too. Apropos, my Lord, I have 
got a new volume of that divine woman's letters. Two 
are entertaining ; the rest, not very divine. But there 
is an application, the happiest, the most exquisite, that 
even she herself ever made ! She is joking with a 
President de Provence, who was hurt at becoming a 
grandfather. She assures him there is no such great 
misfortune in it ; 'I have experienced the case,' says 
she, ' and, believe me, Pate, non dolct.'' If you are not 
both transported with this, ye are not the Lord and 
Lady Nuneham I take ye to be. There are besides 
some twenty letters of Madame de Simiane, who shows 
she would not have degenerated totally, if she had not 
lived in the country, or had anything to say. At the 
end are reprinted Madame de Sevigne's letters on 
Fouquet's Trial, which are very interesting. 



1 26 Charles Fox. 

" I do not know how you like your new subjects, but 
I hear they are extremely content with their Prince and 
Princess. I ought to wish your Lordship joy of all 
your prosperities, and of Mr. Fludd's baptism into the 
Catholic or Universal Faith ; but I reserve public 
felicities for your old Drawing- Room in Leicester Fields. 
Private news we have little but Lord Carmarthen's and 
Lord Cranborne's marriages, and the approaching one 
of Lady Bridget Lane and Mr. Tall-Match. Lord 
Holland has given Charles Fox a draught of an hundred 
thousand pounds, and it pays all his debts, but a trifle 
of thirty thousand pounds, and those of Lord Carlisle, 
Crewe, and Foley, who being only friends, not Jews, 
may wait. So now any younger son may justify losing 
his father's and elder brotiier's estate on precedent.* 

" Neither Lord nor Lady Temple are well, and yet 
they are both gone to Lord Clare's, in Essex, for a 
week. Lord Temple had a very bad fall in the Park, 
and lost his senses for an hour. Yet, though the horse 
is a vicious one, he has been upon it again. In short, 
there are no right-headed people but the Irish ! 

" As it is ancient good breeding not to conclude a 

* ' I went to the House of Commons the other day to hear 
Charles Fox, contrary to a resolution I had made of never setting 
my foot there again. It is strange how disuse makes one awkward. 
I felt a palpitation, as if I were going to speak there myself. The 
object answered : Fox's abilities are amazing at so very early a 
period, especially under the circumstances of such a dissolute life. 
He was just arrived from Newmarket, had sat up drinking all night, 
and had not been in bed. How such talents make one laugh at 
Tully's rules for an orator, and his indefatigable application ! His 
laboured orations are puerile in comparison with this boy's manly 
reason.' — Walpole to Mann, April % 1772. 



Mrs. Clive and Cliveden. I 2 7 

letter without troubling the reader with compliments, 
and as I have none to send, I must beg your Lordship 
not to forget to present my respects to the Countesses 
of Barrymore and Massareene, my dear Sisters in Loo. 
You may be sure I am charged with a large parcel from 
Cliveden,* where I was last night. Except being 
extremely ill, Mrs. Clive is extremely well ; but the 
tax-gatherer is gone off, and she must pay her window- 
lights over again ; and the road before her door is very 
bad, and the parish won't mend it, and there is some 
suspicion that Garrick is at the bottom of it ; so if you 
please to send a shipload of the Giant's Causey by next 
Monday, we shall be able to go to Mr. Rofey's rout at 
Kingston. The Papers said she was to act at Covent 
Garden, and she has printed a very proper answer in 
the Evening Post. Mr. Raftort told me, that formerly, 
when he played Luna in ' The Rehearsal,' he never 
could learn to dance the Hays, and at last he went to 
the Man that teaches grown gentlemen. 

" Miss Davis! is the admiration of all London, but of 
me, who do not love the perfection of what anybody 
can do, and wish she had less top to her voice and 
more bottom. However, she will break Millico's heart, 
which will not break mine. Fierville has sprained his 
leg, and there is another man who sprains his mouth 
with smiling on himself — as I have heard, for I have 

* Walpole's playful name for Little Strawberry Hill, a cottage 
near his villa, and belonging to him, which he gave to Mrs. Clive, 
the actress, for her life. 

f Mrs. Clive's brother, who lived with her. 

X A rew singer who attained great celebrity. 



128 Goldsmith and Garnck. 

not seen him yet, nor a fat old woman and her lean 
daughter, who dance with him. London is very dull, 
so pray come back as soon as you can. Mason is up to 
the ears in ' Gray's Life ;' you will like it exceedingly, 
which is more than you will do this long letter. Well ! 
you have but to go into Lady Nuneham's dressing- 
room, and you may read something ten thousand 
times more pleasing. No, no ! you are not the most 
to be pitied of any human being, though in the midst 
of Dublin Castle." 

Next to the above, Walpole's liveliest letters about 
this date were written to Lady Ossory. Sometimes he 
has to lament the want of news : " Pray, Madam, 
where is the difference between London and the 
country, when everybody is in the country and nobody 
in town ? The houses do not marry, intrigue, talk 
politics, game, or fling themselves out of window. The 
streets do not all run to the Alley, nor the squares 
mortgage thamselves over head and ears. The play- 
houses do not pull themselves down ; and all summer 
long, when nobody gets about them, they behave 
soberly and decently as any Christian in the parish of 
Marylebone. The English of this preface is that I 
have not the Israelitish art of making bricks without 
straw. I cannot invent news when nobody commits 
it." He has nothing better to tell than an anecdote of 
Goldsmith, who died a few months later, and Garrick : 
" I dined and passed Saturday at Beauclerk's, with the 
Edgecombes, the Garricks, and Dr. Goldsmith, and 



Dearth of News. 129 

was most thoroughly tired, as I knew I should be, I 
who hate the playing off a butt. Goldsmith is a fool, 
the more wearying for having some sense. It was the 
night of a new comedy, called ' The School for Wives,'* 
which was exceedingly applauded, and which Charles 
Fox says is execrable. Garrick has at least the chief 
hand in it. I never saw anybody in a greater fidget, 
nor more vain when he returned, for he went to the 
play-house at half-an-hour after five, and we sat waiting 
for him till ten, when he was to act a speech in ' Cato ' 
with Goldsmith ! that is, the latter sat in t'other's lap, 
covered with a cloak, and while Goldsmith spoke, 
Garrick's arms that embraced him, made foolish 
actions. How could one laugh when one had ex- 
pected this for four hours ?" On Christmas night 
1773, he writes : " This has been a very barren half- 
year. The next, I hope, will reinstate my letters in 
their proper character of newspapers." 

The event, however, belied his hopes. In June, 1774, 
he writes to his Countess : 

"Offended at you, Madam! I have crossed myseli 
forty times since I read the impious words, never to be 
pronounced by human lips, — nay, and to utter them, 
when I am seemingly to blame ! — yet, believe me, my 
silence is not owing to negligence, or to that most 
wicked of all sins, inconstancy. I have thought on you 
waking or sleeping, whenever I have thought at all, 
from the moment I saw you last ; and if there was an 
echo in the neighbourhood besides Mr. Cambridge, I 

* A comedy by Hugh Kelly. 

9 



130 Madame de Trop 

should have made it repeat your Ladyship's name, till 
the parish should have presented it for a nuisance. I 
have begun twenty letters, but the naked truth is, I 
found I had absolutely nothing to say. You yourself 
owned, Madam, that I am grown quite lifeless, and it is 
very true. I am none of your Glastonbury thorns that 
blow at Christmas. I am a remnant of the last age, 
and have nothing to do with the present. I am an 
exile trom tne sunbeams of drawing-rooms ; I have 
quitted the gay scenes of Parliament and the Anti- 
quarian Society ; I am not of Almack's ; I don't under- 
stand horse-races ; I never go to reviews ; what can I 
have to talk of? I go to no fetes champetres, what can I 
have to think of ? I know nothing but about myself, 
and about myself I know nothing. I have scarce been 
in town since I saw you, have scarce seen anybody here, 
and don't remember a tittle but having scolded my 
gardener twice, which, indeed, would be as important 
an article as any in Montaigne's Travels, which I have 
been reading, and if I was tired of his Essays, what must 
one be of these ! What signifies what a man thought, 
who never thought of anything but himself; and what 
signifies what a man did, who never did anything?" 

In August, hearing that Lady Ossory had again been 
disappointed of a son, he tells her : " I don't design to 
acknowledge Anne III.; I shall call her Madame de Trop, 
as they named one of the late King of France's daugh- 
ters. A dauphin ! a dauphin ! I will repeat it as often 
as the Graces." A month later he is informed that 
Madame de Trop has received the name of Gertrude : 



Madame de Trop. 131 

" Madam, — ' Methinks an iEsop's fable you relate,' as 
Dryden says in the ' Hind and Panther.' A mouse that 
wraps itself in a French cloak and sleeps on a couch ; 
and a goldfinch that taps at the window and swears it 
will come in to quadrille at eleven o'clock at night ! no, 
no, these are none of iEsop's cattle ; they are too 
fashionable to have lived so near the creation. The 
mouse is neither Country Mouse nor City Mouse ; and 
whatever else he may be, the goldfinch must be a 
Macaroni, or at least of the Sgavoir vivre. I do not 
deny but I have some skill in expounding types and 
portents ; and could give a shrewd guess at the identi- 
cal persons who have travestied themselves into a 
quadruped and biped ; but the truth is, I have no 
mind, Madam, to be Prime Minister. King Pharaoh 
is mighty apt on emergencies to send for us soothsayers, 
and put the whole kingdom into our hands, if his butler 
or baker, with whom he is wont to gossip, does but tell 
him of a cunning man. 

" I have no ambition to supplant Lord North — 
especially as the season approaches when I dread the 
gout ; and I should be very sorry to be fetched out of 
my bed to pacify America. To be sure, Madam, you 
give me a fair field for uttering oracles : however, all I 
will unfold is, that the emblematic animals have no 
views on Lady Louisa.* The omens of her fortune are 
in herself; and I will burn my books, if beauty, sense, 

* Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, Lord Ossory's sister, afterwards mar- 
ried to the Earl of Shelburne. 

9 — 2 



132 A Bunch of Grapes. 

and merit, do not bestow all the happiness on her they 
prognosticate. . . . 

" I like the blue eyes, Madam, better than the 
denomination of Lady Gertrude Fitzpatrick, which, all 
respectable as it is, is very harsh and rough sounding ; 
pray let her change it with the first goldfinch that offers. 
Nay, I do not even trust to the blueth of the eyes. I 
do not believe they last once in twenty times. One 
cannot go into any village fifty miles from London 
without seeing a dozen little children with flaxen hair 
and eyes of sky-blue. What becomes of them all? 
One does not see a grown Christian with them twice in 
a century, except in poetry. 

" The Strawberry Gazette is very barren of news. 
Mr. Garrick has the gout, which is of more consequence 
to the metropolis than to Twitnamshire. Lady Hert- 
ford dined here last Saturday, brought her loo party, 
and stayed supper ; there were Lady Mary Coke, Mrs. 
Howe, and the Colonels Maude and Keene. This was 
very heroic, for one is robbed every hundred yards. 
Lady Hertford herself was attacked last Wednesday on 
Hounslow Heath at three in the afternoon, but she had 
two servants on horseback, who would not let her be 
robbed, and the highwayman decamped. 

" The greatest event I know was a present I received 
last Sunday, just as I was going to dine at Lady Bland- 
ford's, to whom I sacrificed it. It was a bunch of 
grapes as big — as big — as that the two spies carried on 
a pole to Joshua ; for spies in those days, when they 
robbed a vineyard, were not at ail afraid of being over- 



A Bunch of Grapes. 133 

taken. In good truth, this bunch weighed three pounds 
and a half, cote rotie measure ; and was sent to me by 
my neighbour Prado, of the tribe of Issachar, who is 
descended from one of foresaid spies, but a good deal 
richer than his ancestor. Well, Madam, I carried it to 
the Marchioness of Blandford, but gave it to the maitre 
cT hotel, with injunctions to conceal it till the dessert. 
At the end of dinner, Lady Blandford said, she had 
heard of three immense bunches of grapes at Mr. 
Prado's, at a dinner he had made for Mr. Welbore 
Ellis. I said those things were always exaggerated. 
She cried, Oh ! but Mrs. Ellis told it, and it weighed I 
don't know how many pounds, and the Duke of Argyll 
had been to see the hothouse, and she wondered, as it 
was so near, I would not go and see it. Not I, indeed, 
said I ; I dare to say there is no curiosity in it. Just 
then entered the gigantic bunch. Everybody screamed 
There, said I, I will be shot if Mr. Prado has such a 
bunch as yours. In short, she suspected Lady Egre- 
mont, and the adventure succeeded to admiration. If 
you will send the Bedfordshire waggon, Madam, I will 
beg a dozen grapes for you. . . . 

" Pray, Madam, is not it Farming-Woods' tide ?* 
Who is to have the care of the dear mouse in your 
absence ? I wish I could spare Margaret [his house- 
keeper] , who loves all creatures so well that she would 
have been happy in the Ark, and sorry when the Deluge 
ceased ; unless people had come to see Noah's old 

* The period of the year when Lady Ossory left Amptliill for 
Farming Woods. 



134 General Election. 

house, which she would have liked still better than 
cramming his menagerie." 

The dearth of news was presently relieved by a 
General Election, about which and other topics Wal- 
pole writes to Mann : 

" Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1774. 

" It would be unlike my attention and punctuality, to 
see so large an event as an irregular dissolution of 
Parliament, without taking any notice of it to you. It 
happened last Saturday, six months before its natural 
death, and without the design being known but the 
Tuesday before, and that by very few persons. The 
chief motive is supposed to be the ugly state of North 
America, and the effects that a cross winter might have 
on the next elections Whatever were the causes, the 
first consequences, as you may guess, were such a 
ferment in London as is seldom seen at this dead 
season of the year. Couriers, despatches, post-chaises, 
post-horses, hurrying every way ! Sixty messengers 
passed through one single turnpike on Friday. The 
whole island is by this time in equ.\l agitation ; but less 
wine and money will be shed than have been at any 
such period for these fifty years. . . . 

" The first symptoms are not favourable to the Court; 
the great towns are casting off submission, and declaring 
for popular members. London, Westminster, Middle- 
sex, seem to have no monarch but Wilkes, who is at 
the same time pushing for the Mayoralty of London, 
with hitherto a majority on the poll. It is strange how 



Perils by Land and Water. 135 

this man, like a phoenix, always revives from his embers ! 
America, I doubt, is still more unpromising. There are 
whispers of their having assembled an armed force, and 
of earnest supplications arrived for succours of men and 
ships. A civil war is no trifle ; and how we are to 
suppress or pursue in such a vast region, with a handful 
of men, I am not an Alexander to guess ; and for the 
fleet, can we put it upon casters and wheel it from 
Hudson's Bay to Florida ? But I am an ignorant soul, 
and neither pretend to knowledge nor foreknowledge. 
All I perceive already is, that our Parliaments are sub- 
jected to America and India, and must be influenced by 
their politics ; yet I do not believe our senators are 
more universal than formerly. 

"It would be quite unfashionable to talk longer of 
anything but elections ; and yet it is the topic on which 
I never talk or think, especially since I took up my free- 
dom.* . . . 

" In the midst of this combustion, we are in perils by 
land and water. It has rained for this month without 
intermission. There is a sea between me and Rich- 
mond, and Sunday was se'nnight I was hurried down to 
Isleworth in the ferryboat by the violence of the current, 
and had great difficulty to get to shore. / Our roads are 
so infested by highwaymen, that it is dangerous stirring 
out almost by day. /Lady Hertford was attacked on 
Hounslow Heath at three in the afternoon. Dr. Eliot 
was shot at three days ago, without having resisted ; 
and the day before yesterday we were near losing our 
* His quitting Parliament. 



136 Perils by Land and Water. 

Prime Minister, Lord North ; the robbers shot at the 
postilion, and wounded the latter. In short, all the free- 
booters, that are not in India, have taken to the highway. 
The Ladies of the Bedchamber dare not go to the 
Queen at Kew in an evening. The lane between me and 
the Thames is the only safe road I know at present, for 
it is up to the middle of the horses in water. Next 
week I shall not venture to London even at noon, for 
the Middlesex election is to be at Brentford, where the 
two demagogues, Wilkes and Townshend, oppose each 
other ; and at Richmond there is no crossing the river. 
How strange all this must appear to you Florentines ; 
but you may turn to your Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 
and have some idea of it. I am the quietest man at 
present in the whole island ; not but I might take some 
part, if I would. I was in my garden yesterday, seeing 
my servants lop some trees ; my brewer walked in 
and pressed me to go to Guildhall for the nomina- 
tion cf members for the county. I replied, calmly, 
' Sir, when I would go no more to my own election, you 
may be very sure I will go to that of nobody else.' My 
old tune is, 

" ' Suave mari magno turbantibus scquora ventis,' &c. 

•'Adieu J 

" P.S. Arlington Street, 7th. 

" I am just come to town, and find your letter. . . . 
The approaching death of the Pope will be an event of 
no consequence. That old mummery is near its con- 
clusion, at least as a political object. The history of 



Sir Horace Mann. 1 3 7 

the latter Popes will be no more read than that of the 
last Constantinopolitan Emperors. Wilkes is a more 
conspicuous personage in modern story than the Ponti- 
fex Maximus of Rome. The poll for Lord Mayor ended 
last night ; he and his late Mayor had above 1,900 
votes, and their antagonists not 1,500. It is strange 
that the more he is opposed, the more he succeeds !" 

The foregoing is an average sample of the bulk of 
Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann. It was to 
these Macaulay referred when he said, sneeringly, that 
Walpole " left copies of his private letters, with copious 
notes, to be published after his decease." There can 
be no doubt that their author regarded them as a 
valuable contribution to the history of his times. And 
such, in truth, they were. Many of them contain full 
details of some political movement, written by one who, 
if not himself engaged in the struggle, was in close 
communication with the actors on one side at least. 
Hence, though these letters may be loaded with bias, 
they are often of solid substance. If they are not 
equally important for our present purpose, this is 
because they deal almost entirely with public matters 
and with the general news of the day. " Nothing is so 
pleasant in a letter," writes Walpole to Lady Ossory, 
'•' as the occurrences of society. I am always regretting 
in my correspondence with Madame du Deffand and 
Sir Horace Mann, that I must not make use of them, 
as the one has never lived in England, and the other 
not these fifty years ; and so, my private stories would 
want notes as much as Petronius. Sir Horace and I 



138 Lord Clive. 

have no acquaintance in common but the Kings and 
Queens of Europe." 

In a letter to Mann, dated November 24, 1774, 
Walpole returns to the subject of the new Parlia- 
ment : 

" A great event happened two days ago — a political 
and moral event ; the sudden death of that second 
Kouli Khan, Lord Clive. There was certainly illness 
in the case ; the world thinks more than illness. His 
constitution was exceedingly broken and disordered, 
and grown subject to violent pains and convulsions. 
He came unexpectedly to town last Monday, and they 
say, ill. On Tuesday his physician gave him a dose of 
laudanum, which had not the desired effect. On the 
rest, there are two stories ; one, that the physician 
repeated the dose ; the other, that he doubled it him- 
self, contrary to advice.* In short, he has terminated 
at fifty a life of so much glory, reproach, art, wealth, 
and ostentation ! He had just named ten members for 
the new Parliament. t 

" Next Tuesday that Parliament is to meet — and a 
deep game it has to play ! few Parliaments a greater. 
The world is in amaze here that no account is arrived 
from America of the result of their General Congress — if 
any is come, it is very secret ; and that has no favour- 
able aspect. The combination and spirit there seem to 

* Lord Clive, in fact, cut his throat, as Walpole, correcting him- 
self, mentions in a postscript to this letter. 

f In 1760, Walpole wrote: "General Clive is arrived, all over 
estates and diamonds. If a beggar asks charity, he says, ' Friend, 
I have no small brilliants about me.' " 



The History of Manners. 139 

be universal, and is very alarming. I am the humble 
servant of events, and you know never meddle with 
prophecy. It would be difficult to descry good omens, 
be the issue what it will. 

" The old French Parliament is restored with great 
eclat. Monsieur de Maurepas, author of the revolution, 
was received one night at the Opera with boundless 
shouts of applause. It is even said that the mob in- 
tended, when the King should go to hold the lit de jus- 
tice, to draw his coach. How singular it would be if 
Wilkes's case should be copied for a King of France ! 
Do you think Rousseau was in the right, when he said 
that he could tell what would be the manners of any 
capital city, from certain given lights ? I don't know 
what he may do on Constantinople and Pekin — but 
Paris and London ! I don't believe Voltaire likes these 
changes. I have seen nothing of his writing for many 
months; not even on the poisoning Jesuits.* For our 
part, I repeat it, we shall contribute nothing to the 
Histoire des Mceurs, not for want of materials, but for 
want of writers. We have comedies without novelty, 
gross satires without stings, metaphysical eloquence, 
and antiquarians that, discover nothing. 

" ' Boeotum in crasso jurares aeie natos !' 
i 

" Don't tell me I am grown old and peevish and 

supercilious — name the geniuses of 1774, and I submit. 

-■' The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of 

the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at 

Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a 

They poisoned Pope Ganganelli. — Walpcle. 



140 A Traveller from Lima. 

Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some 
curious traveller from Lima will visit England, and give 
a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the editions 
of Balbec and Palmyra ; but am I not prophesying, 
contrary to my consummate prudence, and casting 
horoscopes of empires like Rousseau ? Yes ; well, I will 
go and dream of my visions." 

More than one writer has cited Walpole's traveller 
from Lima as the original of Lord Macaulay's traveller 
from New Zealand, who, in the midst of a vast solitude, 
takes his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to 
sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. Others have traced 
the passage in the celebrated Review of Ranke's 
" History of the Popes," to Volney, Mrs. Barbauld, 
Kirke White, and Shelley ; while others again have 
pointed out that, from whatsoever source derived, the 
idea expressed in this passage had been twice before 
employed by Macaulay, once, in 1824, in a Review of 
Mitford's " Greece," and the second time, in 1829, in 
his Review of Mill's " Essay on Government." The 
picture of the New Zealander, however, resembles the 
less ambitious, but equally graphic, figure of the tra- 
veller from Lima more closely than it does any of the 
other passages referred to.* What is remarkable is, 

* " Who knows but that hereafter some traveller like myself will 
sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder 
Zee ? . . . Who knows but that he will sit down solitary amid silent 
ruins ?"etc — Volney's Ruins. 

" When London shall be an habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul's 
and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, 
in the midst of an unpeopled marsh ; . . . some Transatlantic 



The Sf avoir Vivre Club. 141 

that the Review of Ranke's " History " appeared in 
October, 1840, whereas the later portion of Walpole's 
correspondence with Mann, to which the above extract 
belongs, was first published from the original manu- 
scripts in 1843. How then could Macaulay know any- 
thing of the Peruvian stranger ?* 

The following was also addressed to Sir H. Mann. 
It is dated in May, 1775 : 

" You have not more Masquerades in Carnival than 
we have ; there is one at the Pantheon to-night, another 
on Monday ; and in June is to be a pompous one on the 
water, and at Ranelagh. This and the first are given 
by the Club called the Scavoir Vivre, who till now have 
only shone by excess of gaming. The leader is that 
fashionable orator Lord Lyttelton,-f- of whom I need 
not tell you more. I have done with these diversions, 
and enjoy myself here. Your old acquaintance, Lord 
and Lady Dacre, and your old friend, Mr. Chute, dined 
with me to-day : poor Lord DacreJ is carried about, 

commentator will be weighing . . . the respective merits of the 
Bells and the Fudges, and their historians." — Shelley, Dedication to 
Peter Bell the Third. 

The rest are still more remote. 

* Walpole, as well as Macaulay, repeats himself : " Nations at 
the acme of their splendour, or at the eve of their destruction, are 
worth observing. When they grovel in obscurity afterwards, they 
furnish neither events nor reflections ; strangers visit the vestiges of 
the Acropolis, or may come to dig for capitals among the ruins of St. 
Paul's ; but nobody studies the manners of the pedlars and banditti 
that dwell in mud huts within the precincts of a demolished temple." 
^Letter to Mason, dated May 12, 1778, first published in 1851. 

f Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton ; he had been at Florence. 

X Thomas Lennard Barret ; his wife was sister of Lord Camden. 



142 Reflections on Life. 

though not worse than he has been these twenty year?. 
Strawberry was in great beauty ; what joy I should 
have in showing it to you ! Is this a wish I must never 
indulge ? Alas ! 

" I have had a long chain of thoughts since I wrote 
the last paragraph. They ended in smiling at the word 
never. How one pronounces it to the last moment! 
Would not one think I counted on a long series of years 
to come ? Yet no man has the termination of all his 
views more before his eyes, or knows better the idleness 
of framing visions to one's self. One passes away so 
soon, and worlds succeed to worlds, in which the occu- 
piers build the same castles in the air. What is ours 
but the present moment ? And how many of mine are 
gone ! And what do I want to show you ? A play- 
thing-vision, that has amused a poor transitory mortal 
for a few hours, and that will pass away like its master! 
Well, and yet is it not as sensible to conform to common 
ideas, and to live while one lives? Perhaps the wisest 
way is to cheat one's self. Did one concentre all one's 
thoughts on the nearness and certainty of dissolution, 
all the world would lie eating and sleeping like the 
savage Americans. Our wishes and views were given 
us to gild the dream of life, and if a Strawberry Hill can 
soften the decays of age, it is wise to embrace it, and 
due gratitude to the Great Giver to be happy with it. 
The true pain is the reflection on the numbers that are 
not so blessed ; yet I have no doubt but the real 
miseries of life — I mean those that are unmerited and 
unavoidable, — will be compensated to the sufferers. 



The Pretenders Happiness. 143 

Tyrants are a proof of an hereafter. Millions of men 
cannot be formed for the sport of a cruel child. 

" How happy is the Pretender in missing a Crown ! 
When dead, he will have all the advantage that other 
Kings have, the being remembered ; and that greater 
advantage, which Kings who die in their childhood 
have, historians will say, he would have been a great 
King if he had lived to reign ; and that greatest advan- 
tage which so very few of them have, his reign will be 
stained with no crimes and blunders. If he is at 
Florence, pray recommend me to him for his historian ; 
you see I have all the qualities a Monarch demands, I 
am disposed to flatter him. You may tell him too what I 
have done for his uncle Richard III. The mischief is in 
it, if I am not qualified for a Royal Historiographer, 
when I have whitewashed one of the very few whom my 
brethren, so contrary to their custom, have agreed to 
traduce." 

In the autumn of 1775, Walpole was in Paris, whence 
he sends, for the benefit of Conway's daughter, this 
important piece of information: "Tell Mrs. Darner, 
that the fashion now is to erect the toupee into a high 
detached tuft of hair, like a cockatoo's crest ; and this 
toupee they call la physionomie — I don't guess why." 
And in giving George Selwyn an account of the modish 
French ladies whom he met, he adds a description 
suited to the humour of that facetious gentleman : 
"With one of them," he says, "you would be de- 
lighted, a Madame de Marchais. She is not perfectly 



144 Paris Fashions. 

young, has a face like a Jew pedlar, her person is about 
four feet, her head about six, and her coiffure about ten. 
Her forehead, chin, and neck are whiter than a miller's; 
and she wears more festoons of natural flowers than all 
the figurantes at the Opera. Her eloquence is still 
more abundant, her attentions exuberant. She talks 
volumes, writes folios — I mean in billets; presides ovei 
the Academie, inspires passions. . . . She has a house 
in a nut-shell, that is fuller of invention than a fairy 
tale ; her bed stands in the middle of the room, because 
there is no other space that would hold it ; it is sur- 
rounded by a perspective of looking-glasses. . . ." In 
reference to the rage for billets, he mentions " a collec- 
tion that was found last winter at Monsieur de Ponde- 
veylle's : there were sixteen thousand from one lady, in 
a correspondence of only eleven years. For fear of 
setting the house on fire if thrown into the chimney, 
the executors crammed them into the oven." " There 
have been known," he adds, " persons here who wrote 
to one another four times a day ; and I was told of one 
couple, who being always together, and the lover being 
fond of writing, he placed a screen between them, and 
then wrote to Madam on t'other side, and flung them 
over." Of his " dear old friend," he reports : 

"Madame du Deffand has been so ill, that the day 
she was seized I thought she would not live till night. 
Her Herculean weakness, which could not resist straw- 
berries and cream after supper, has surmounted all the 
tips and downs which followed her excess ; but her im- 



Madame dit Deffand ill. 145 

patience to go everywhere and to do everything has 
been attended with a kind of relapse, and another kind 
of giddiness ; so that I am not quite easy about her, as 
they allow her to take no nourishment to recruit, and 
she will die of inanition, if she does not live upon it. 
She cannot lift her head from the pillow without etour- 
dissemens ; and yet her spirits gallop faster than any- 
body's, and so do her repartees. She has a great 
supper to-night for the Due de Choiseul, and was in 
such a passion yesterday with her cook about it, and 
that put Tonton* into such a rage, that nos dames de 
Saint Joseph thought the devil or the philosophers were 
flying away with their convent ! As I have scarce 
quitted her, I can have had nothing to tell you. If she 
gets well, as I trust, I shall set out on the 12th ; but I 
cannot leave her in any danger — though I shall run 
many myself, if I stay longer. I have kept such bad 
hours with this malade, that I have had alarms of gout ; 
and bad weather, worse inns, and a voyage in winter, 
will ill suit me. . . . 

" I must repose a great while after all this living in 
company ; nay, intend to go very little into the world 
again, as I do not admire the French way of burning 
one's candle to the very snuff in public." 

At the end of 1775, Sir Horace Mann's elder brother 
died, the family estate came to the Ambassador, and 
Walpole flattered himself "that a regular correspon- 

* The lady's dog, which, on her death, passed into the care of 
Walpole. 

IO 



146 Growth of London. 

dence of thirty-four years will cease, and that I shall see 
him again before we meet in the Elysian fields." He 
was disappointed. In February, 1776, he writes to his 
old friend : " You have chilled me so thoroughly by the 
coldness of your answer, and by the dislike you express 
to England, that I shall certainly press you no more to 
come. I thought at least it would have cost you a 
struggle." Again, a little later : " Pray be assured, I 
acquiesce in all you say on your own return, though 
grieved at your resolution, and more so at the necessity 
you find in adhering to it. It is not my disposition to 
prefer my own pleasure to the welfare of my friends. 
Your return might have opened a warm channel of 
affection which above thirty years could not freeze ; but 
I am sure you know my steadiness too well to suspect 
me of cooling to you, because we are both grown too 
old to meet again. I wished that meeting as a luxury 
beyond what old age often tastes ; but I am too well 
prepared for parting with everything to be ill- 
humouredly chagrined because one vision fails." In 
July, 1776, we find the following, also addressed to 
Mann : 



" I did flatter myself with being diverted at your sur- 
prise from so general an alteration of persons, objects, 
manners, as you would have found ; but there is an end 
of all that pleasing vision ! I remember when my father 
went out of place, and was to return visits, which 
Ministers are excused from doing, he could not guess 
where he was, finding himself in so many new streets 



Growth of London. 147 

and squares. This was thirty years ago. They have 
been building ever since, and one would think they had 
imported two or three capitals. London could put 
Florence into its fob-pocket ; but as they build so 
slightly, if they did not rebuild, it would be just the 
reverse of Rome, a vast circumference of city surround- 
ing an area of ruins. As its present progress is chiefly 
north, and Southwark marches south, the metropolis 
promises to be as broad as long. Rows of houses shoot 
out every way like a polypus ; and, so great is the rage 
of building everywhere, that, if I stay here a fortnight, 
without going to town, I look about to see if no new 
house is built since I went last. America and France 
must tell us how long this exuberance of opulence is to 
last ! The East Indies, I believe, will not contribute to 
it much longer. Babylon and Memphis and Rome, 
probably, stared at their own downfall. Empires did 
not use to philosophise, nor thought much but of them- 
selves. Such revolutions are better known now, and 
we ought to expect them — I do not say we do. This 
little island will be ridiculously proud some ages hence 
of its former brave days, and swear its capital was once 
as big again as Paris, or — what is to be the name of 
the city that will then give laws to Europe ? — perhaps 
New York or Philadelphia." 

At the close of 1776, Walpole had another severe 
illness. It is first mentioned in a letter to Lady 
Ossory : 

" It is not from being made Archbishop of York, that 

10 — 2 



148 Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

I write by a secretary [Kirgate] , Madam ; but because 
my right hand has lost its cunning. It has had the 
gout ever since Friday night, and I am overjoyed with 
it, for there is no appearance of its going any farther. 
I came to town on Sunday in a panic, concluding I 
should be bedrid for three months, but I went out last 
night, and think I shall be able in a few days to play 
upon the guitar if I could play upon it at all. . . . 

" I have seen the picture of ' St. George,' and ap- 
prove the Duke of Bedford's head, and the exact like- 
ness of Miss Vernon,* but the attitude is mean and 
foolish, and expresses silly wonderment. But of all, 
delicious is a picture of a little girl of the Duke of 
Buccleuch, who is overlaid with a long cloak, bonnet, 
and muff, in the midst of the snow, and is perishing 
blue and red with cold, but looks so smiling, and so 
good-humoured, that one longs to catch her up in one's 
arms and kiss her till she squalls. 

" My hand has not a word more to say." 
The attack proved obstinate, and we have again 
complaints of the English climate, mixed with lamenta- 
tions over the change in English manners. Thus in 
February, 1777, he writes : 

* This picture, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, was painted for Mr. 
Rigby. The attitude of Miss Vernon is, as Walpole here says, 
affected. That of Lord William Russell illustrates the genius oi 
Sir Joshua. The story is told, that the boy was unwilling to stand 
still for his portrait, and running about the room, crouched in a 
corner to avoid it. Sir Joshua, at once seizing the possibility of 
painting him so, said, "Well, stay there, my little fellow,' and 
drew him in a natural position of fear at the dragon. — R. VERNON 
SMITH (afterwards LORD Lyveden). 



Change in Manners. 149 

" Everything is changed ; as always must happen 
when one grows old, and is prejudiced to one's old ways. 
I do not like dining at nearly six, nor beginning the 
evening at ten at night. If one does not conform, one 
must live alone ; and that is more disagreeable and 
more difficult in town than in the country, where old 
useless people ought to live. Unfortunately, the country 
does not agree with me ; and I am sure it is not fancy ; 
for my violent partiality to Strawberry Hill cannot be 
imposed upon. I am persuaded that it is the damp- 
ness of this climate that gives me so much gout ; and 
London, from the number of fires and inhabitants, must 
be the driest spot in the nation." 

The following, written to Lord Nuneham in July, is 
in a gayer tone : 

" Now I have taken this liberty, my dear Lord, I 
must take a little more ; you know my old admiration 
and envy are your garden. I do not grudge Pomona or 
Sir James Cockburn their hot-houses, nor intend to 
ruin myself by raising sugar and water in tanner's bark 
and peach skins. The Flora Nunehamica is the height 
of my ambition, and if your Linnaeus should have any 
disciple that would condescend to look after my little 
flower-garden, it would be the delight of my eyes and 
nose, provided the cataracts of heaven are ever shut 
again ! Not one proviso do I make, but that the pupil 
be not a Scot. We had peace and warm weather 
before the inundation of that northern people, and 
therefore I beg to have no Attila for my gardener. 



150 Our Climate. 

"Apropos, don't your Lordship think that another 
set of legislators, the Maccaronis and Maccaronesses, 
are very wise ? People abuse them for turning days, 
nights, hours and seasons topsy-turvy ; but surely it 
was upon mature reflection. We had a set of customs 
and ideas borrowed from the continent that by no 
means suited our climate. Reformers bring back things 
to their natural course. Notwithstanding what I said 
in spite in the paragraph above, we are in truth but 
Greenlanders, and ought to conform to our climate. 
We should lay in store of provisions and candles and 
masquerades and coloured lamps for ten months in the 
year, and shut out our twilight and enjoy ourselves. In 
September and October, we may venture out of our ark, 
and make our hay, and gather in our corn, and go to 
horse-races, and kill pheasants and partridges for stock 
for our winter's supper. I sailed in a skiff and pair this 
morning to Lady Cecilia Johnston, and found her, like 
a good housewife, sitting over her fire, with her cats 
and dogs and birds and children. She brought out a 
dram to warm me and my servants, and we were very 
merry and comfortable. As Lady Nuneham has neither 
so many two-footed or four-footed cares upon her hands, 
I hope her hands have been better employed. 

'*' I wish I could peep over her shoulder one of these 
wet mornings 1" 



The American War. 151 



CHAPTER VII. 

The American War.— Irish Discontent.— Want of Money.— The 
Houghton Pictures Sold.— Removal to Berkeley Square. — Ill- 
health.— A Painting by Zoffani.— The Ra fe e for News.— The Duke 
of Gloucester.— Wilkes.— Fashions, Old and New.— Mackerel 
News.— Pretty Stories. — Madame de Se'vigne^s Cabinet. — Picture 
of his Waldegrave Nieces. — The Gordon Riots. — Death of 
Madame du Deffand. — The Blue Stockings. 

Humourist as he was, and too often swayed by preju- 
dice, no man had a sounder judgment than Walpole 
when he gave his reason fair play. In his estimate of 
public events, he sometimes displayed unusual sagacity. 
Though his dislike of Lord Chatham led him to dis- 
parage the efforts of the old man eloquent to avert the 
American War — efforts which filled Franklin with ad- 
miration — he yet foresaw quite as clearly as Chatham 
the disastrous results of that contest. The celebrated 
speeches which fell dead on the ear of Parliament had 
no more effect upon Walpole ; but Walpole did not 
need to be moved by them, for he was convinced 
already. " This interlude," he writes to Conway, who 
was then in Paris, " would be entertaining, if the scene 
was not so totally gloomy. The Cabinet have deter- 
mined on civil war. . . . There is food for meditation ! 



152 The American War. 

Will the French you converse with be civil and keep 
their countenances ? Pray remember it is not decent to 
be dancing at Paris, when there is a civil war in your 
own country. You would be like the country squire, 
who passed by with his hounds as the battle of Edgehill 
began." The letter in which these words occur is dated 
January 22, 1775. Three weeks later, the writer adds : 
" The war with our Colonies, which is now declared, is 
a proof how much influence jargon has on human 
actions. A war on our own trade is popular /* Both 
Houses are as eager for it as they were for conquering 
the Indies — which acquits them a little of rapine, when 
they are as glad of what will impoverish them as of 
what they fancied was to enrich them." His sympathy, 
as well as his judgment, was on the side of the Colonies 
On September 7th 1775, he writes to Mann : " You 
will not be surprised that I am what I always was, a 
zealot for liberty in every part of the globe, and conse- 
quently that I most heartily wish success to the 
Americans. They have hitherto not made one blunder; 
and the Administration have made a thousand, besides 
the two capital ones, of first provoking, and then of uniting 
the Colonies. The latter seem to have as good heads as 
hearts, as we want both." And on the nth: "The 

* ' I forgot to tell you that the town of Birmingham has petitioned 
the Parliament to enforce the American Acts, that is, make war ; 
for they have a manufacture of swords and muskets.'— WALPOLE 
to Mann, Jan. 27th, 1775. 

4 Is it credible that five or six of the great trading towns have 
presented addresses against the Americans?' — Same to Same, Oct. 
10, 1775. The writer tries to persuade himself that these addresses 
were procured by • those boobies, the country gentlemen.' 



The American War. 153 

Parliament is to meet on the 20th of next month, and 
vote twenty-six thousand seamen ! What a paragraph 
of blood is there ! With what torrents must liberty be 
preserved in America ! In England what can save it ? 
. . . What prospect of comfort has a true Englishman? 
Why, that Philip II. miscarried against the boors of 
Holland, and that Louis XIV. could not replace 
James II. on the throne !" And when Fortune declared 
herself on the side of the Colonists, Horace, unmoved 
by the reverses of his country, steadily preserved the 
same tone. " We have been horribly the aggressors," 
he wrote at the end of 1777, "and I must rejoice that the 
Americans are to be free, as they had a right to be, and 
as I am sure they have shown they deserve to be." But 
the calamities and disgraces of the time weighed heavily 
on his spirits. His correspondence throughout 1777 
and the two following years is full of the American War. 
He recurs to the subject again and again, and harps 
upon it continually. It does not fall within our plan to 
quote his criticisms and reflections on the conduct of 
Lord North and his opponents. They are generally as 
acute and sensible as they are always vigorous and 
lively. The chief mistake one remarks in them is, that 
they assume the victory of America to mean the ruin 
of England's Empire. The writer saw British troops 
everywhere defeated, retreating, laying down their 
arms ; France allying herself with the rebellious 
Colonies, and threatening England with invasion ; 
Spain joining in the hostile league ; and Ireland 
showing fresh signs of disaffection : what wonder if 



154 Irish Discontent. 

he was tempted to predict that we should " moulder 
piecemeal into our insignificant islandhood ?" In May, 
1779, he writes : " Our oppressive partiality to two or 
three manufacturing towns in England has revolted the 
Irish, and they have entered into combinations against 
purchasing English goods in terms more offensive than 
the first associations of the Colonies. In short, we 
have for four or five years displayed no alacrity or 
address, but in provoking our friends and furnishing 
weapons of annoyance to our enemies ; and the unhappy 
facility with which the Parliament has subscribed to all 
these oversights has deceived the Government into 
security, and encouraged it to pull almost the whole 
fabric on its own head. We can escape but by conces- 
sions and disgrace ; and when we attain peace, the 
terms will prove that Parliamentary majorities have 
voted away the wisdom, glory, and power of the 
nation." 

Before the date of this extract, the pressure of the 
war had made itself felt in English society. In the 
preceding summer, Horace had written to Mason, then 
engaged on his poem of "The English Garden" : 

" Distress is already felt ; one hears of nothing but of 
the want of money ; one sees it every hour. I sit in my 
Blue window, and miss nine in ten of the carriages that 
used to pass before it. Houses sell for nothing, which, 
two years ago, nabobs would have given lacs of dia- 
monds for. Sir Gerard Vanneck's house and beautiful 
terrace on the Thames, with forty acres of ground, and 
valued by his father at twenty thousand pounds, was 



Want of Money. 1 5 5 

bought in last week at six thousand Richmond is 
deserted ; an hundred and twenty coaches used to be 
counted at the church-door — there are now twenty. I 
know nobody that grows rich but Margaret. This 
Halcyon season has brought her more customers than 
ever, and were anything to happen to her, I have 
thoughts, like greater folk, of being my own minister, 
and showing my house myself. I don't wonder your 
Garden has grown in such a summer, and I am glad it 
has, that our taste in gardening may be immortal in 
verse, for I doubt it has seen its best days' Your 
poem may transplant it to America, whither our best 
works will be carried now, as our worst used to be. 
Do not you feel satisfied in knowing you shall be a 
classic in a free and rising empire ? Swell all your 
ideas, give a loose to all your poetry ; your lines will be 
repeated on the banks of the Orinoko ; and which is 
another comfort, Ossian's ' Dirges ' will never be known 
there. Poor Strawberry must sink in face Romuli ; that 
melancholy thought silences me." 

Besides being vexed at the state of public affairs, 
Walpole suffered much about this time from the gout, 
and from family troubles. His nephew, Lord Orford, 
having recovered from a second attack of insanity, 
resolved on selling the pictures at Houghton. In 
February, 1779, Horace writes to Lady Ossory : " The 
pictures at Houghton, I hear, and I fear, are sold : 
what can I say ? I do not like even to think on it. It 
is the most signal mortification to my idolatry for my 
father's memory, that it could receive. It is stripping 



156 The Houghton Pictures Sold. 

the temple of his glory and of his affection. A madman 
excited by rascals has burnt his Ephesus. I must 
never cast a thought towards Norfolk more ; nor will 
hear my nephew's name if I can avoid it. Him I can 
only pity ; though it is strange he should recover any 
degree of sense, and never any of feeling !" The 
transaction was not, in fact, at that moment concluded. 
In the course of the same year, however, the whole 
gallery was sold to the Empress of Russia for a little 
more than forty thousand pounds. Walpole did not 
think the bargain a bad one, though he would rather, 
he said, the pictures were sold to the Crown of 
England than to that of Russia, where they would be 
burnt in a wooden palace on the first insurrection, 
while in England they would still be Sir Robert Wal- 
pole's Collection. " But," he added, " my grief is that 
they are not to remain at Houghton, where he placed 
them and wished them to remain." 

While grieving over his father's pictures, Horace 
found himself involved in a Chancery suit. The lease 
of his town house in Arlington Street running out about 
this time, he had bought a larger house in Berkeley 
Square. Difficulties, however, hindered the completion 
of the purchase, and the affair went into Chancery. 
Fortunately, under Walpole's management, the suit 
became a friendly one. " I have persisted in compli- 
menting and flattering my parties, till by dint of com- 
plaisance and respect I have brought them to pique 
themselves on equal attentions ; so that, instead of a 
lawsuit, it has more the air of a treaty between two 



Removal to Berkeley Square. 1 5 7 

little German princes who are mimicking their betters 
only to display their titular dignities. His Serene High- 
ness, Colonel Bishopp, is the most obsequious and 
devoted servant of my Serenity the Landgrave of 
Strawberry." The judge was equally agreeable. 
I Yesterday I received notice from my attorney that 
the Master of the Rolls has, with epigrammatic de- 
spatch, heard my cause, and pronounced a decree in 
my favour. Surely, the whip of the new driver, Lord 
Thurlow, has pervaded all the hard wheels of the law, 
and set them galloping. I must go to town on Monday, 
and get my money ready for payment, — not from im- 
patience to enter on my premises, but though the 
French declare they are coming to burn London, bank- 
bills are still more combustible than houses, and should 
my banker's shop be reduced to ashes, I might have a 
mansion to pay for, and nothing to pay with. If both 
were consumed, at least I should not be in debt." The 
purchase-money paid, and possession taken, the next 
step was to remove to Berkeley Square. In October, 
1779, he writes to Lady Ossory, whose sister-in-law,* 
the newly-married Countess of Shelburne, was just 
established in the same square : 

" My constitution, which set out under happy stars, 
seems to keep pace with the change of constellations, 
and fail like the various members of the empire. I am 
now confined with the rheumatism in my left arm, and 
find no benefit from our woollen manufacture, which I 
flattered myself would always be a resource. On 

* The Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick before referred to. — See p. 131. 



158 Ill-health. 

Monday I shall remove to Shelburne Square, and 
watch impatiently the opening of the Countess's win- 
dows ; though with all her and her Earl's goodness to 
me, I doubt I shall profit little of either. I do not love 
to be laughed at or pitied, and dread exposing myself 
to numbers of strange servants and young people, who 
wonder what Methuselah does out of his coffin. Lady 
Blandford is gone ; her antediluvian dowagers dis- 
persed; amongst whom I was still reckoned a lively 
young creature. Wisdom I left forty years ago to 
Welbore Ellis, and must not pretend to rival him now, 
when he is grown so rich by the semblance of it. Since 
I cannot then act old age with dignity, I must keep my- 
self out of the way, and weep for England in a corner." 

The Lady Blandford mentioned in this passage was 
a widow who had lived within a few miles of Horace, at 
Sheen, and had recently died. During her illness, Wal- 
pole, in writing to Lady Ossory, had dwelt on the Roman 
fortitude with which the sick lady supported her suffer- 
ings, and on the devotion shown to her by her friend, 
Miss Stapylton. He added in his usual strain . " Miss 
Stapylton has £"30,000, and Lady Blandford nothing. 
I wish we had some of these exalted characters in 
breeches ! These two women shine like the last 
sparkles in a piece of burnt paper, which the chil- 
dren call the parson and clerk. Alas ! the rest of our 
old ladies are otherwise employed ; they are at the 
head of fleets and armies." Walpole at this moment 
was altogether out of heart. " I see myself a poor 
invalid, threatened with a painful and irksome conclu- 



A Painting by Zoffani. 159 

sion, and mortified at seeing the decay of my country 
more rapid than my own." But he could still keep 
up a tone of gaiety. In November he wrote to Mann : 

" I went this morning to Zoffani's to see his picture 
or portrait of the ' Tribune at Florence ;' and, though 
my letter will not put on its boots these three days, I 
must write while the subject is fresh in my head. The 
first thing I looked for, was you — and I could not find 
you. At last I said, ' Pray, who is that Knight of the 
Bath?' — 'Sir Horace Mann.' — 'Impossible!' said I. 
My dear Sir, how you have left me in the lurch ! — you 
are grown fat, jolly, young ; while I am become the 
skeleton of Methuselah. . . . 

" Well ! but are you really so portly a personage as 
Zoffani has represented you ? I envy you. Everybody 
can grow younger and plump, but I. My brother, Sir 
Edward Walpole, is as sleek as an infant, and, though 
seventy-three, is still quite beautiful. He has a charm- 
ing colour, and not a wrinkle. I told him, when Lord 
Orford* was in danger, that he might think what he 
would, but I would carry him into the Court of Chan- 
cery, and put it to the consciences of the judges, which 
of us two was the elder by eleven years ?" 

And two days later we have the followin amusing 
letter to Lady Ossory : 

" Berkeley Square, Nov. 14, 1779. 
" I must be equitable ; I must do the world justice ; 
there are really some hopes of its amendment ; I have 

* Horace's nephew, the mad earl. 



160 The Rage for News. 

not heard one lie these four days ; but then, indeed, 1 
have heard nothing. Well, then, why do you write ? 
Stay, Madam ; my letter is not got on horseback yet ; 
nor shall it mount till it has something to carry. It is 
my duty, as your gazetteer, to furnish you with news, 
true or false, and you would certainly dismiss me if I 
did not, at least, tell you something that was impossible. 
The whole nation is content with hearing anything 
new, let it be ever so bad. Tell the first man you meet 
that Ireland has revolted ; away he runs, and tells 
everybody he meets, — everybody tells everybody, and 
the next morning they ask for more news. Well, 
Jamaica is taken ; oh, Jamaica is taken. Next day, 
what news ? Why, Paul Jones is landed in Rutland- 
shire, and has carried off the Duchess of Devonshire, 
and a squadron is fitting out to prevent it ; and I am to 
have a pension for having given the earliest intelligence; 
and there is to be a new farce called The Rutlandshire 
Invasion, and the King and Queen will come to town 
to see it, and the Prince of Wales will not, because he 
is not old enough to understand pantomimes.* 

" Well, Madam ; having despatched the nation and 
its serious affairs, one may chat over private matters. 
I have seen Lord Macartney, and do affirm that he is 
shrunk, and has a soupcon of black that was not wont to 
reside in his complexion. . . . 

" Mr. Beauclerk has built a library in Great Russell 
Street, Bloomsbury, that reaches half-way to Highgate. 

* The Prince was now in his eighteenth year, having been born 
on the 12th of August, 1762. 



The Duke of Gloucester. ibi 

Everybody goes to see it ; it has put the Museum's nose 
quite out of joint. 

" Now I return to politics. Sir Ralph Payne and 
Dr. Johnson are answering General Burgoyne, and they 
say the words are to be so long that the reply must be 
printed in a pamphlet as long as an atlas, but in an 
Elzevir type, or the first sentence would fill twenty 
pages in octavo. You may depend upon the truth of it, 
for Mr. Cumberland told it in confidence to one with 
whom he is not at all acquainted, who told it to one 
whom I never saw ; so you see, Madam, there is no 
questioning the authority. 

" I will not answer so positively for what I am going 
to tell you, as I had it only from the person himself. 
The Duke of Gloucester was at Bath with the Margrave 
of Anspach. Lord Nugent came up and would talk to 
the Duke, and then asked if he might take the liberty of 
inviting his Royal Highness to dinner? I think you 
will admire the quickness and propriety of the answer : 
— the Duke replied, ' My Lord, I make no acquaintance 
but in London,' where you know, Madam, he only has 
levees. The Irishman continued to talk to him even 
after that rebuff. He certainly hoped to have been 
very artful — to have made court there, and yet not 
have offended anywhere else* by not going in town, 
which would have been a gross affront to the Duke, had 
he accepted the invitation. 

" I was at Blackheath t'other morning, where I was 

* The Duke was in disgrace with the King on account of his 
marriage. 

II 



1 62 Wilkes. 

grieved. There are eleven Vander Werffs that cost an 
immense sum : half of them are spoiled since Sir 
Gregory Page's death by servants neglecting to shut 
out the sun. There is another room hung with the 
history of Cupid and Psyche, in twelve small pictures 
by Luca Giordano, that are sweet. There is, too, a 
glorious Claude, some fine Teniers, a noble Rubens 
and Snyders, two beautiful Philippo Lauras, and a few 
more, — and several very bad. The house is magnifi- 
cent, but wounded me ; it was built on the model of 
Houghton, except that three rooms are thrown into a 
gallery. 

" Now I have tapped the chapter of pictures, you 
must go and see Zoffani's 'Tribune at Florence,' which is 
an astonishing piece of work, with a vast deal of merit. 

" There too you will see a delightful piece of Wilkes 
looking — no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is 
a caricature of the Devil acknowledging Miss Sin in 
Milton. I do not know why, but they are under a 
palm-tree, which has not grown in a free country for 
some centuries. 

" 15th. 

" With all my pretences, there is no more veracity in 
me than in a Scotch runner for the Ministry. Here 
must I send away my letter without a word in it worth 
a straw. All the good news I know is, that a winter is 
come in that will send armies and navies to bed, and 
one may stir out in November without fear of being 
tanned. I am heartily glad that we shall keep Jamaica 
and the East Indies another year, that one may have 



Fashions, Old and New. 163 

time to lay in a stock of tea and sugar for the rest of 
one's days. I think only of the necessaries of life, and 
do not care a rush for gold and diamonds, and the 
pleasure of stealing logwood. The friends of Govern- 
ment, who have thought of nothing but of reducing us 
to our islandhood, and bringing us back to the sim- 
plicity of ancient times, when we were the frugal, 
temperate, virtuous old English, ask how we did before 
tea and sugar were known. Better, no doubt ; but as 
I did net happen to be born two or three hundred 
years ago, I cannot recollect precisely whether diluted 
acorns, and barley bread spread with honey, made a 
very luxurious breakfast. 

" I was last night at Lady Lucan's to hear the 
Misses Bingham sing jomelli's ' Miserere,' set for two 
voices. There were only the Duchess of Bedford, 
Lady Bute . . . and half a dozen Irish. . . . The 
Duchess told me, that a habit-maker returned from 
Ampthill is gone stark in love with Lady Ossory, on 
fitting her with the new dress — I think they call it a 
Levite— and says he never saw so glorious a figure. I 
know that ; and so you would be in a hop-sack, Madam 
— but where is the grace in a man's nightgown bound 
round with a belt ? 

" Good-night, Lady ! I hope I shall have some- 
thing to tell you in my next, that my letter may be 
shorter. 

" Codicil to my to-day's : — viz. Nov. 15, 1779. 

** I enclosed the above to Lord Ossory, because it 
was not worth sixpence, and had sent it to the post, 

11 — 2 



164 Mackerel News. 

and then went to Bedford House, where, lo ! enters 
Lady Shelburne, looking as fresh and ripe as Pomona. 
N.B. Her windows were not open yesterday, and to- 
day there was such a mist, ermined with snow, that I 
could not see. I find it was not a habit-maker that 
was smitten with your Ladyship as a pig in a poke, 
but somebody else ; but as her Grace's mouth has lost 
one tooth, and my ear, I suspect, another, I have not 
found out who the unfortunate man is. 

" Next enters your Ladyship's letter. I have seen 
my dignity of Minister to Spain* — many a fair castle 
have I erected in that country, but truly never resided 
there. . . . This is long enough for a codicil, in which 
one has nothing more to give." 

In the same lively mood, he writes about the same 
time to Mason : 

" Berkeley Square, Nov. I don't know what day. 

" If you can be content with anything but news as 
fresh as mackerel, I will tell you as pretty a story as a 
gentleman can hear in a winter's day, though it has not 
a grain of novelty in it but to those who never heard it, 
which was my case till yesterday. 

"When that philosophic tyrant the Czarina (who 
murdered two emperors for the good of their people, to 
the edification of Voltaire, Diderot, and D'Alembert) 
proposed to give a code of laws that should serve all 
her subjects as much or as little as she pleased, she 

* Referring to a rumour that he had been appointed ambassador 
to Spain, 



Pretty Stories. 165 

ordered her various states to send deputies who should 
specify their respective wants. Amongst the rest came 
a representative of the Samoieds; he waited on the 
marshal of the diet of legislation, who was Archbishop 
of Novgorod. ' I am come,' said the savage, ' but I do 
not know for what.' ' My clement mistress,' said his 
Grace, 'means to give a body of laws to all her 
dominions.' — ' Whatever laws the Empress shall give 
us,' said the Samoied, ' we shall obey, but we want no 
laws.' — ' How,' said the Prelate, ' not want laws ! why, 
you are men like the rest of the world, and must have 
the same passions, and consequently must murder, 
cheat, steal, rob, plunder,' &c, &c, &c. 

' It is true,' said the savage, ' we have now and then 
a bad person among us, but he is sufficiently punished 
by being shut out of all society.' 

" If you love nature in its naturalibus, you will like 
this tale. I think one might make a pretty ' Spectator ' 
by inverting the hint: I would propose a general jail 
delivery, not only from all prisons, but madhouses, as 
not sufficiently ample for a quarter of the patients and 
candidates ; and to save trouble, and yet make as 
impartial distinction, to confine the virtuous and the 
few that are in their senses. But I am digressing, and 
have not yet told you the story I intended ; at least, 
only the first part. 

" One day Count Orlow, the Czarina's accomplice in 
more ways than one, exhibited himself to the Samoied 
in the robes of the order, and refulgent with diamonds. 
The savage surveyed him attentively, but silently. 



1 66 Pretty Stories. 

'May I ask,' said the favourite, 'what it is you ad- 
mire ?' — ' Nothing,' replied the Tartar : ' I was think- 
ing how ridiculous you are.' — ' Ridiculous,' cried 
Orlow, angrily; 'and pray in what?' — 'Why, you 
shave your beard to look young, and powder your 
hair to look old !' 

" Well ! as you like my stories, I will tell you a third, 
but it is prodigiously old, yet it is the only new trait 
that I have found in that ocean Bibliotheque des Romans, 
which I had almost abandoned ; for I am out of 
patience with novels and sermons, that have nothing 
new, when the authors may say what they will without 
contradiction. 

" My history is a romance of the Amours of Eleanor 
of Aquitaine, Queen of our Henry the Second. She is 
in love with somebody who is in love with somebody 
else. She puts both in prison. The Count falls dan- 
gerously ill, and sends for the Queen's Physician. 
Eleanor hears it, calls for the Physician, and gives 
him a bowl, which she orders him to prescribe to the 
Count. The Doctor hesitates, doubts, begs to know 
the ingredients. — 'Come,' says her Majesty, 'your 
suspicions are just — it is poison ; but remember, it is a 
crime I want from you, not a lecture ; go and obey my 
orders ; my Captain of the guard and two soldiers 
shall accompany you, and see that you execute my 
command, and give no hint of my secret ; go, I will 
have no reply:' the Physician submits, finds the pri- 
soner in bed, his mistress sitting by. The Doctor feels 
his pulse, produces the bowl, sighs, and says, ' My dear 



Madame de Sdvigne^s Cabinet. 167 

friend, I cannot cure your disorder, but I have a remedy 
here for myself,' and swallows the poison. 

" Is not this entirely new ? it would be a fine coup do 
theatre, and yet would not do for a tragedy, for the 
Physician would become the hero of the piece, would 
efface the lovers ; and yet the rest of the play could not 
be made to turn on him. 

" As all this will serve for a letter at any time, I will 
keep the rest of my paper for something that will not 
bear postponing. 

" 20th. 

" Come, my letter shall go, though with only one 
new paragraph. Lord Weymouth has resigned, as 
well as Lord Gower. I believe that little faction 
flattered themselves that their separation would blow 
up Lord North, and yet I am persuaded that sheer 
cowardice has most share in Weymouth's part. There 
is such universal dissatisfaction, that when the crack 
is begun, the whole edifice perhaps may tumble, but 
where is the architect that can repair a single story ? 
The nation stayed till everything was desperate, before 
it would allow that a single tile was blown off." 

At the close of the year, he is cheered by the sight of 
a precious relic : 

" You are to know, Madam, that I have in my 
custody the individual ebony cabinet in which Madame 
de Sevigne kept her pens and paper for writing her 
matchless letters. It was preserved near Grignan by 



1 68 Picture of his Waldegrave Nieces. 

an old man who mended her pens, and whose de- 
scendant gave it last year to Mr. Selwyn, as truly 
worthy of such a sacred relic. It wears, indeed, all the 
outward and visible signs of such venerable precious- 
ness, for it is clumsy, cumbersome, and shattered, and 
inspires no more idea of her spirit and legercte, than the 
mouldy thigh-bone of a saint does of the unction of his 
sermons. I have full powers to have it repaired and 
decorated as shall seem good in my own eyes, though I 
had rather be authorised to inclose and conceal it in a 
shrine of gold and jewels." 

Towards the end of May, 1780, he writes : " Sir 
Joshua has begun a charming picture of my three fair 
nieces, the Waldegraves, and very like. They are 
embroidering and winding silk ; I rather wished to 
have them drawn like the Graces, adorning a bust of 
the Duchess as the Magna Mater ; but my ideas are 
not adopted." We hear no more of this picture for 
some time. Attention was almost immediately en- 
grossed by the Gordon riots. Walpole writes to Lady 
Ossory : 

" Berkeley Square, June 3, 1780. 

" I know that a governor or gazetteer ought not to 
desert their posts, if a town is besieged, or a town is 
full of news ; and therefore, Madam, I resume my 
office. I smile to-day — but I trembled last night ; for 
an hour or more I never felt more anxiety. I knew the 
bravest of my friends were barricaded into the House of 
Common-, and every avenue to it impossible. Till I 



The Gordon Riots. 169 

heard the Horse and Foot Guards were gone to their 
rescue, I expected nothing but some dire misfortune ; 
and the first thing I heard this morning was that part 
of the town had had a fortunate escape from being 
burnt after ten last night. You must not expect order, 
Madam ; I must recollect circumstances as they occur ; 
and the best idea I can give your Ladyship of the tumult 
will be to relate it as I heard it. 

" I had come to town in the morning on a private 
occasion, and found it so much as I left it, that though 
I saw a few blue cockades here and there, I only took 
them for new recruits. Nobody came in ; between 
seven and eight I saw a hack and another coach arrive 
at Lord Shelburne's, and thence concluded that Lord 
George Gordon's trumpet had brayed to no purpose. 
At eight I went to Gloucester House ; the Duchess told 
me, there had been a riot, and that Lord Mansfield's 
glasses had been broken, and a bishop's, but that most 
of the populace were dispersed. About nine his Royal 
Highness and Colonel Hey wood arrived ; and then we 
heard a much more alarming account. The concourse 
had been incredible, and had by no means obeyed the 
injunctions of their apostle, or rather had interpreted 
the spirit instead of the letter. The Duke had reached 
the House with the utmost difficulty, and found it sunk 
from the temple of dignity to an asylum of lamentable 
objects. There were the Lords Hillsborough, Stor- 
mont, Townshend, without their bags, and with their 
hair dishevelled about their ears, and Lord Willoughby 
without his periwig, and Lord Mansfield, whose glasses 



170 The Gordon Riots. 

had been broken, quivering on the woolsack like an 
aspen. Lord Ashburnham had been torn out of his 
chariot, the Bishop of Lincoln ill-treated, the Duke of 
Northumberland had lost his watch in the holy hurly- 
burly, and Mr. Mackenzie his snuff-box and spectacles. 
Alarm came that the mob had thrown down Lord 
Boston, and were trampling him to death ; which they 
almost did. They had diswigged Lord Bathurst on his 
answering them stoutly, and told him he was the pope, 
and an old woman ; thus splitting Pope Joan into two. 
Lord Hillsborough, on being taxed with negligence, 
affirmed that the Cabinet had the day before empowered 
Lord North to take precautions ; but two Justices that 
were called denied having received any orders. Colonel 
Heywood, a very stout man, and luckily a very cool 
one, told me he had thrice been collared as he went by 
the Duke's order to inquire what was doing in the other 
House ; but though he was not suffered to pass, he 
reasoned the mob into releasing him, — yet, he said, he 
never saw so serious an appearance and such deter- 
mined countenances. 

" About eight the Lords adjourned, and were suffered 
to go home ; though the rioters declared that if the 
other House did not repeal the Bill,* there would at 
night be terrible mischief. Mr. Burke's name had been 
given out as the object of resentment. General Con- 
way I knew would be intrepid and not give way ; nor did 
he, but inspired the other House with his own resolution. 

* An Act passed in 1778 relaxing the penal laws against Roman 
Catholics. 



The Gordon Riots. 171 

Lord George Gordon was running backwards and for- 
wards, from the windows of the Speaker's Chamber 
denouncing all that spoke against him to the mob in 
the lobby. Mr. Conway tasked him severely both in 
the House and aside, and Colonel Murray told him he 
was a disgrace to his family. Still the members were 
besieged and locked up for four hours, nor could divide, 
as the lobby was crammed. Mr. Conway and Lord 
Frederick Cavendish, with whom I supped afterwards, 
told me there was a moment when they thought they 
must have opened the doors and fought their way out 
sword in hand. Lord North was very firm, and at last 
they got the Guards and cleared the pass. 

" Blue banners had been waved from tops of houses 
at Whitehall as signals to the people, while the coaches 
passed, whom they should applaud or abuse. Sir 
George Savile's and Charles Turner's coaches were 
demolished. Ellis, whom they took for a Popish 
gentleman, they carried prisoner to the Guildhall in 
Westminster, and he escaped by a ladder out of a 
window. Lord Mahon harangued the people from 
the balcony of a coffee-house, and begged them to 
retire." 

In a letter to Mann he continues the story : 

" This tumult, which was over between nine and ten 
at night, had scarce ceased before it broke out in two 
other quarters. Old Haslang's* chapel was broken 
open and plundered ; and, as he is a Prince of 

* Count Haslang, Minister from the Elector of Bavaria : he had 
been here from the year 1740. 



172 The Gordon Riots. 

Smugglers as well as Bavarian Minister, great quan« 
tities of run tea and contraband goods were found in 
his house. This one cannot lament ; and still less, as 
the old wretch has for these forty years usurped a hired 
house, and, though the proprietor for many years has 
offered to remit his arrears of rent, he will neither quit 
the house nor pay for it. 

" Monsieur Cordon, the Sardinian Minister, suffered 
still more. The mob forced his chapel, stole two silver 
lamps, demolished everything else, threw the benches 
into the street, set them on fire, carried the brands into 
the chapel, and set fire to that ; and, when the engines 
came, would not suffer them to play, till the Guards 
arrived, and saved the house and probably all that part 
of the town. Poor Madame Cordon was confined by 
illness. My cousin, Thomas Walpole, who lives in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, went to her rescue, and dragged 
her, for she could scarce stand with terror and weak- 
ness, to his own house." 

Of the events of Black Wednesday, Horace was an 
eye-witness. His letters to his Countess form a sort of 
journal : 

" Wednesday, five o'clock, June 7, 1780. 

" I am heartily glad I am come to town, though 
never was a less delicious place ; but there was no 
bearing to remain philosophically in the country, and 
hear the thousand rumours of every hour, and not 
know whether one's friends and relations were not 
destroyed. Yesterday Newgate was burnt, and other 



The Gordon Riots. 173 

houses, and Lord Sandwich near massacred. At Hyde 
Park Corner, I saw Guards at the Lord President's 
door, and in Piccadilly, met George Selwyn and the 
Signorina,* whom I wondered he ventured there. He 
came into my chaise in a fury, and told me Lord Mans- 
field's house is in ashes, and that five thousand men 
were marched to Caen Wood — it is true, and that one 
thousand of the Guards are gone after them. A camp 
of ten thousand is forming in Hyde Park as fast as 
possible, and the Berkshire militia is just arrived. 
Wedderburn and Lord Stormont are threatened, and 
I do not know who. The Duchess of Beaufort sent an 
hour ago to tell me Lord Ashburnham had just adver- 
tised her that he is threatened, and was sending away 
his poor bedridden Countess and children ; and the 
Duchess begged to know what I proposed to do. I 
immediately went to her, and quieted her, and assured 
her we are as safe as we can be anywhere, and as 
little obnoxious ; but if she was alarmed, I advised her 
to remove to Notting Hill, where Lady Mary Coke is 
absent. The Duchess said the mob were now in 
Saville Row ; we sent thither, and so they are, round 
Colonel Woodford's, who gave the Guards orders to fire 
at Lord Mansfield's, where six at least of the rioters 
were killed. 

" The mob are now armed, having seized the stores 
in the Artillery Ground. 

" If anything can surprise your Ladyship, it will be 
what I am going to tell you. Lord George Gordon 
* Mademoiselle Fagniani, Selwyn's adopted daughter. 



i74 The Gordon Riots. 

went to Buckingham House this morning, and asked an 
audience of the King. Can you be more surprised still ? 
— He was refused. 

" I must finish, for 1 am going about the town to 
learn, and see, and hear. Caen Wood is saved ; a 
regiment on march met the rioters. 

" It will probably be a black night : I am decking 
myself with blue ribbons, like a May-day garland. 
Horsemen are riding by with muskets. I am sorry 
I did not bring the armour of Francis I. to town, as I 
am to guard a Duchess Dowager and an heiress. Will 
it not be romantically generous if I yield the latter to 
my nephew? 

" From my garrison in Berkeley Square. 

" Wednesday night, past two in the morning, June 7, 1780. 

" As it is impossible to go to bed (for Lady Betty 
Compton has hoped I would not this very minute, 
which, next to her asking the contrary, is the thing not 
to be refused), I cannot be better employed than in 
proving how much I think of your Ladyship at the 
most horrible moment I ever saw. You shall judge. 

" I was at Gloucester House between nine and ten. 
The servants announced a great fire ; the Duchess, her 
daughters, and I went to the top of the house, and 
beheld not only one but two vast fires, which we took 
for the King's Bench and Lambeth ; but the latter was 
the New Prison, and the former at least was burning at 
midnight. Colonel Heywood came in and acquainted 
his Royal Highness that nine houses in Great Queen 



The Gordon Riots. 175 

Street had been gutted, and the furniture burnt ; and 
he had seen a great Catholic distiller's at Holborn 
Bridge broken open and all the casks staved ; and 
since, the house had been set on fire. 

" At ten I went to Lord Hertford's, and found him 
and his sons charging muskets. Lord Rockingham has 
two hundred soldiers in his house, and is determined to 
defend it. Thence I went to General Conway's, and in 
a moment a servant came in and said there was a great 
fire just by. We went to the street-door and thought it 
was St. Martin's Lane in flames, but it is either the 
Fleet Prison or the distiller's. I forgot that in the 
court of Gloucester House I met Colonel Jennings, who 
told me there had been an engagement at the Royal 
Exchange to defend the Bank, and that the Guards 
had shot sixty of the mob ; I have since heard seventy, 
for I forgot to tell your Ladyship that at a. great council, 
held this evening at the Queen's House, at which Lord 
Rockingham and the Duke of Portland were present, 
military execution was ordered, for, in truth, the Jus- 
tices dare not act. 

" After supper I returned to Lady Hertford, finding 
Charing Cross, and the Haymarket, and Piccadilly, 
illuminated from fear, though all this end of the town 
is hitherto perfectly quiet, lines being drawn across the 
Strand and Holborn, to prevent the mob coming west- 
ward. Henry and William Conway arrived, and had 
seen the populace break open the toll-houses on Black- 
friars Bridge, and carry off bushels of halfpence, which 
fell about the streets, and then they set fire to the toll- 



176 The Gordon Riots. 

houses. General Conway's porter had seen five distinct 
conflagrations. 

" Lady Hertford's cook came in, white as this paper. 
He is a German Protestant. He said his house had been 
attacked, his furniture burnt ; that he had saved one 
child, and left another with his wife, whom he could 
not get out ; and that not above ten or twelve persons 
had assaulted his house. I could not credit this, at 
least was sure it was an episode that had no connec- 
tion with the general insurrection, and was at most 
some pique of his neighbours. I sent my own footman 
to the spot in Woodstock Street ; he brought me word 
there had been eight or ten apprentices who made the 
riot, that two Life Guardsmen had arrived and secured 
four of the enemies. It seems the cook had refused to 
illuminate like the rest of the street. To-morrow I 
suppose his Majesty King George Gordon will order 
their release ; they will be inflated with having been 
confessors, and turn heroes. 

" On coming home I visited the Duchess Dowager 
and my fair ward ; and am heartily tired with so many 
expeditions, for which I little imagined I had youth 
enough left. 

" We expect three or four more regiments to-morrow, 
besides some troops of horse and militia already arrived. 
We are menaced with counter-squadrons from the 
country. There will, I fear, be much blood spilt before 
peace is restored. The Gordon has already surpassed 
Masaniello, who I do not remember set his own capital 
on fire. Yet I assure your ladyship there is no panic. 



The Gordon Riots. 177 

Lady Aylesbury has been at the play in the Haymarket, 
and the Duke and my four nieces at Ranelagh, this 
evening. For my part, I think the common diversions 
of these last four-and-twenty hours are sufficient to 
content any moderate appetite ; and as it is now three 
in the morning, I shall wish you good night, and try 
to get a little sleep myself, if Lord George Macbeth 
has not murdered it all. I own I shall not soon 
forget the sight I saw from the top of Gloucester 
House. 

" Thursday morning, after breakfast. 
" I do not know whether to call the horrors of the 
night greater or less than I thought. My printer, who 
has been out all night, and on the spots of action, says, 
not above a dozen were killed at the Royal Exchange, 
some few elsewhere ; at the King's Bench, he does not 
know how many ; but in other respects the calamities 
are dreadful. He saw many houses set on fire, women 
and children screaming, running out of doors with what 
they could save, and knocking one another down with 
their loads in the confusion. Barnard's Inn is burnt, 
and some houses, mistaken for Catholic. Kirgate* says 
most of the rioters are apprentices, and plunder and 
drink have been their chief objects, and both women 
and men are still lying dead drunk about the streets : 
brandy is preferable to enthusiasm. I trust many more 
troops will arrive to-day. What families ruined! What 
wretched wives and mothers ! What public disgrace ! 
— ay ! and where, and when, and how will all this con- 

* Walpole's printer. 

12 



1 78 The Gordon Riots. 

fusion end ! and what shall we be when it is concluded? 
I remember the Excise and the Gin Act, and the 
rebels at Derby, and Wilkes's interlude, and the French 
at Plymouth ; or I should have a very bad memory ; 
but I never till last night saw London and Southwark 
in flames • 

u After dinner. 

" It is a moment, Madam, when to be surprised is 
not surprising. But what will you say to the House of 
Commons meeting by twelve o'clock to-day, and ad- 
journing, ere fifty members were arrived, to Monday 
se'nnight ! So adieu all government but the sword ! 

" Will your Ladyship give me credit when I heap 
contradictions on absurdities — will you believe such 
confusion and calamities, and yet think there is no con- 
sternation ? Well, only hear. My niece, Mrs. Keppel, 
with her three daughters, drove since noon over West- 
minster Bridge, through St. George's Fields, where the 
King's Bench is smoking, over London Bridge, passed 
the Bank, and came the whole length of the City ! 
They have been here, and say the people look very 
unquiet ; but can one imagine that they would be 
smiling ? Old Lady Albemarle, who followed me in a 
few minutes from Gloucester House, was robbed at 
Mrs. Keppel's door in Pall Mall, between ten and 
eleven, by a horseman. Sparrow, one of the delivered 
convicts, who was to have been hanged this morning, 
is said to have been shot yesterday as he was spiriting 
up the rioters. Kirgate has just heard in the Park, that 



The Gordon Riots. 179 

the Protestant Association disavow the seditious, and 
will take up arms against them. If we are saved, it will 
be so as by fire. 

" I shall return to my own castle to-morrow : I had 
not above four hours' sleep last night, and must get 
some rest. General Conway is enraged at the adjourn- 
ment, and will go away too. Many coaches and chaises 
did leave London yesterday. My intelligence will not 
be so good nor so immediate ; but you will not want 
correspondents. Disturbances are threatened again 
for to-night ; and some probably will happen, but 
there are more troops, and less alacrity in the out- 
laws. 

" Berkeley Square, June 9, at noon, 1780. 

" All has been quiet to-night, as far as we know in 
this region ; but not without blood being spilt yester- 
day. The rioters attacked the Horse Guards about six 
in Fleet Street, and, not giving them time to load, were 
repelled by the bayonet. Twenty fell, thirty-five were 
wounded and sent to the hospital, where two died 
directly. Three of the Guards were wounded, and a 
young officer named Marjoribank. Mr. Conway's foot- 
man told me he was on a message at Lord Amherst's 
when the Guards returned, and that their bayonets 
were steeped in blood. 

" I heard, too, at my neighbour Duchess's, whither I 
went at one in the morning, that the Protestant Asso- 
ciators, disguised with blue cockades as friends, had 
fallen on the rioters in St. George's Fields, and killed 

12 — a. 



180 The Gordon Riots. 

many. I do not warrant the truth, but I did hear often 
in the evening that there had been slaughter in the 
Borough, where a great public-house had been de- 
stroyed, and a house at Redriffe, and another at 
Islington. Zeal has entirely thrown off the mask, and 
owned its name — plunder. Its offspring have extorted 
money from several houses with threats of firing them 
as Catholic. Apprentices and Irish chairmen, and all 
kinds of outlaws, have been the most active. Some 
hundreds are actually dead about the streets, with the 
spirits they plundered at the distiller's ; the low women 
knelt and sucked them as they ran from the staved 
casks. 

" It was reported last night that the primate, George 
Gordon, is fled to Scotland : for aught I know he may 
not be so far off as Grosvenor Place. All is rumour 
and exaggeration ; and yet it would be difficult to 
exaggerate the horrors of Wednesday night ; a town 
taken by storm could alone exceed them. 

" I am going to Strawberry this instant, exhausted 
with fatigue, for I have certainly been on my feet longer 
these last eight-and-forty hours than in forty days 
before. . . . 

" Adieu ! Madam ; allow my pen a few holidays, 
unless the storm recommences." 

On hearing that Lord George Gordon had been 
arrested, he writes again : 

u Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, late. 
" Was not I cruelly out of luck, Madam, to have been 



The Gordon Riots. 181 

fishing in troubled waters for two days for your Lady- 
ship's entertainment, and to have come away very few 
hours before the great pike was hooked ? Well, to drop 
metaphor, here are Garth's lines reversed, 

'Thus little villains oft submit to fate, 
That great ones may enjoy the world in state.' 

Four convicts on the eve of execution are let loose 
from Newgate, and Lord George Gordon is sent to the 
Tower. If he is hanged, the old couplet will recover 
its credit, for Mr. Wedderburn is Chief Justice. 

" I flatter myself I shall receive a line from your 
Ladyship to-morrow morning : I am impatient to hear 
what you think of black Wednesday. I know how much 
you must have been shocked, but I long to read your 
own expressions ; when you answer, then one is con- 
versing. My sensations are very different from what 
they were. While in the thick of the conflagration, I 
was all indignation and a thousand passions. Last 
night, when sitting silently alone, horror rose as I 
cooled ; and grief succeeded, and then all kinds of 
gloomy presages. For some time people have said, 
where will all this end ? I as often replied, where will 
it begin ? It is now begun, with a dreadful overture ; 
and I tremble to think what the chorus may be ! The 
sword reigns at present, and saved the capital ! What 
is to depose the sword ? — Is it not to be feared, on the 
other hand, that other swords may be lifted up ? — What 
probability that everything will subside quietly into the 
natural channel ? — Nay, how narrow will that channel 



1 82 The Gordon Riots. 

be, whenever the prospect is cleared by peace ? What 
a dismal fragment of an empire ! yet would that moment 
were come when we are to take a survey of our ruins ! 
That moment I probably shall not see. When I rose 
this morning, I found the exertions I had made with 
such puny powers, had been far beyond what I could 
bear ; I was too sick to go on with dressing myself. 
This evening I have been abroad, and you shall hear no 
more of it. I have been with Lady Di, at Richmond, 
where I found Lady Pembroke, Miss Herbert, and Mr. 
Brudenell. Lord Herbert is arrived. They told me the 
melancholy position of Lady Westmorland. She is 
sister of Lord George Gordon, and wife of Colonel 
Woodford, who is forced to conceal himself, having 
been the first officer who gave orders to the soldiers to 
fire, on the attack of Lord Mansfield's house. How 
many still more deplorable calamities from the tragedy 
of this week that one shall never hear of ! I will change 
my style, and, like an epilogue after a moving piece, 
divert you with a bon-mot of George Selwyn. He came 
to me yesterday morning from Lady Townshend, who, 
terrified by the fires of the preceding night, talked the 
language of the Court, instead of Opposition. He said 
she put him in mind of removed tradesmen, who hang 
out a board with, ' Burnt out from over the way.' 
Good-night, Madam, till I receive your letter. 

" Monday morning, the 12th. 

" Disappointed ! disappointed ! not a line from your 
Ladyship ; I will not send away this till I hear from 



The Gordon Riots. 183 

you. Last night, at Hampton Court, I heard of two 
Popish chapels demolished at Bath, and one at Bristol. 
My coachman has just been in Twickenham, and says 
half Bath is burnt ; I trust this is but the natural pro- 
gress of lies, that increase like a chairman's legs by 
walking. Mercy on us ! we seem to be plunging into 
the horrors of France, in the reigns of Charles VI. and 
VII. ! — yet, as extremes meet, there is at this moment 
amazing insensibility. Within these four days I have 
received five applications for tickets to see my house ! 
One from a set of company who fled from town to avoid 
the tumults and fires. I suppose iEneas lost Creiisa by 
her stopping at Sadlers' Wells. 

"13th. 

" The letter I have this moment received is so kind, 
Madam, that it effaces all disappointment. Indeed, my 
impatience made me forget that no post comes in here 
on Mondays. To-day's letters from town mention no 
disturbance at Bristol or anywhere else. Every day 
gained is considerable, at least will be so when there has 
been time for the history of last week to have spread, 
and intelligence from the distant counties to be returned. 
All I have heard to-day is of some alteration to be 
made to the Riot Act, that Lord George cannot be 
tried this month, and that the King will go to the 
House on Monday. I will now answer what is neces- 
sary in your Ladyship's and take my leave, for, as you 
observe, the post arrives late, and I have other letters 
that I must answer. Mr. Williams interrupted me, and 



184 Death of Madame du Deffand. 

has added a curious anecdote, — and a horrible one, to 
my collection of the late events. One project of the 
diabolical incendiaries was to let loose the lions in the 
Tower, and the lunatics in Bedlam. The latter might 
be from a fellow-feeling in Lord George, but cannibals 
do not invite wild beasts to their banquets. The 
Princess Daskiou will certainly communicate the 
thought to her mistress and accomplice, the Legisla- 
tress of Russia. 

" P.S. I like an ironic sentence in yesterday's London 
Courant, which says, all our grievances are red-dressed." 

To complete the misfortunes of these years, Walpole 
lost his " blind old woman " in the autumn of 1780. 
Under date October gth, he writes from Strawberry 
Hill to Mann : 

" I have heard from Paris of the death of my dear 
old friend Madame du Deffand, whom I went so often 
thither to see. It was not quite unexpected, and was 
softened by her great age, eighty-four, which forbad 
distant hopes ; and, by what I dreaded more than her 
death, her increasing deafness, which, had it become, 
like her blindness, total, would have been living after 
death. Her memory only began to impair ; her amazing 
sense and quickness, not at all. I have written to her 
once a week for these last fifteen years, as correspon- 
dence and conversation could be her only pleasures. 
You see that I am the most faithful letter-writer in the 
world — and, alas ! never see those I am so constant 



Death of Madame du Deffand. 185 

to ! One is forbidden common-place reflections on 
these misfortunes, because they are common-place ; but 
is not that, because they are natural ? But your never 
having known that dear old woman is a better reason 
for not making you the butt of my concern." 

Three weeks later we have the following from London 
to Lady Ossory : 

" As I have been returned above a fortnight, I should 
have written had I had a syllable to tell you ; but what 
could I tell you from that melancholy and very small 
circle at Twickenham Park, almost the only place I do 
go to in the country, partly out of charity, and partly as 
I have scarce any other society left which I prefer to it ; 
for, without entering on too melancholy a detail, recol- 
lect, Madam, that I have outlived most of those to 
whom I was habituated, Lady Hervey, Lady Suffolk, 
Lady Blandford — my dear old friend [Madame du 
Deffand] , I should probably never have seen again — 
yet that is a deeper loss, indeed ! She has left me all 
her MSS. — a compact between us — in one word I had, 
at her earnest request, consented to accept them, on 
condition she should leave me nothing else. She had. 
indeed, intended to leave me her little all, but I declared 
I would never set foot in Paris again (this was ten years 
ago) if she did not engage to retract that destination. 
To satisfy her, I at last agreed to accept her papers, 
and one thin gold box with the portrait of her dog. I 
have written to beg her dog itself, which is so cross, that 1 
am sure nobody else would treat it well ; and I have 



[86 The Blue Stockings. 

ordered her own servant, who read all letters to her, 
to pick out all the letters of living persons, and 
restore them to the several writers without my seeing 
them." 

Walpole's liking for accomplished French women like 
Madame du Deffand was equalled by his dislike of the 
English " Blue-stockings." At the beginning of 1781, he 
seems to have been a good deal in company with the 
latter, and we have some amusing passages : " I met 
Mrs. Montagu t'other night at a visit. She said she 
had been alone the whole preceding day, quite hermeti- 
cally sealed — I was very glad she was uncorked, or I 
might have missed that piece of learned nonsense. . . . 
I was much diverted with your setting Mrs. Montagu 
on her head, which indeed she does herself without the 
help of Hermes. She is one of my principal entertain- 
ments at Mrs. Vesey's, who collects all the graduates 
and candidates for fame, where they vie with one 
another, till they are as unintelligible as the good folks 
at Babel." 

"Mr. Gilpin* talks of my researches, which makes me 
smile ; I know, as Gray would have said, how little I 
have researched, and what slender pretensions are mine 
to so pompous a term. Apropos to Gray, Johnson's 
' Life,' or rather criticism on his Odes, is come out ; a 
most wretched, dull, tasteless, verbal criticism — yet, 
timid too. But he makes amends, he admires Thom- 

* Author of an "Essay on Prints," the third edition of which he 
dedicated to Horace Walpole. 



The Blue Stockings. 187 

son and Akcnside, and Sir Richard Blackmore, and has 
reprinted Dennis's ' Criticism on Cato,' to save time, 
and swell his pay. In short, as usual, he has proved 
that he has no more ear than taste. Mrs. Montagu and 
all her Maenades intend to tear him limb from limb for 
despising their moppet Lord Lyttelton." 

" I saw Dr. Johnson last night at Lady Lucan's, who 
had assembled a blue-stocking meeting in imitation of 
Mrs. Vesey's Babels. It was so blue, it was quite 
Mazarine-blue. Mrs. Montagu kept aloof from Johnson, 
like the West from the East. There were Soame 
Jenyns, Persian Jones, Mr. Sherlocke, the new court 
with Mr. Courtenay, besides the out-pensioners of 
Parnassus. Mr. Wraxall* was not, I wonder why, and 
so will he, for he is popping into every spot where he can 
make himself talked of, by talking of himself; but I 
hear he will come to an untimely beginning in the House 
of Commons." 

* Afterwards Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, Bart., known by his 
" Memoirs of His Own Life." 



i8& Walpole in his Sixty-fourth Year 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Walpole in his Sixty-fourth Year.— The Royai Academy. — Tonton. 
— Charles Fox. — William Pitt. — Mrs. Hobart's Sans Soaci. — 
Improvements at Florence. — Walpole's Dancing Feats. — No 
Feathers at Court.— Highwaymen. — Loss of the Royal George. — 
Mrs. Siddons. — Peace. — Its Social Consequences.— The Coali- 
tion. — The Rivals, — Political Excitement.— The Westminster 
Election. — Political Caricatures. — Conway's Retirement. — Lady 
Harrington. — Balloons. — Illness. — Recovery. 

"I never remonstrate against the behests of Dame 
Prudence, though a lady I never got acquainted with 
till near my grand climacteric." So wrote Horace soon 
after passing the mystic period, compounded of seven 
and nine, which was once regarded as the topmost 
round in the ladder of human life. He would have his 
correspondents believe that his attention to the dame's 
commands was not very regular at first. In the spring 
of 1781, he is able to report to Conway, " My health is 
most flourishing for me." Accordingly, he goes about a 
good deal, and enjoys a sort of rejuvenescence. Of 
course, he visits the Exhibition of the Royal Academy 
at Somerset House, where Reynolds's picture of the 
Ladies Waldegrave was shown. " The Exhibition," he 



The Royal Academy. 189 

writes to Mason, " is much inferior to last year's ;* 
nobody shines there but Sir Joshua and Gainsborough. 
The head of the former's Dido is very fine ; I do not 
admire the rest of the piece. His Lord Richard Caven- 
dish is bold and stronger than he ever coloured. The 
picture of my three nieces is charming. Gainsborough 
has two pieces with land and sea, so free and natural 
that one steps back for fear of being splashed. The 
back front of the Academy is handsome, but like the 
other to the street, the members are so heavy, that one 
cannot stand back enough to see it in any proportion, 
unless in a barge moored in the middle of the Thames." 
The same day, May 6, he writes to Conway from Straw- 
berry Hill: 

" Though it is a bitter north-east, I came hither to- 
day to look at my lilacs, though a la glace ; and to get 
from pharaoh, for which there is a rage. I doated on 
it above thirty years ago ; but it is not decent to sit up 
all night now with boys and girls. My nephew, Lord 
Cholmondeley, the banker a la mode, has been de- 
molished. He and his associate, Sir Willoughby 
Aston, went early t'other night to Brooks's, before 
Charles Fox and Fitzpatrick, who keep a bank there, 
were come ; but they soon arrived, attacked their 
rivals, broke their bank, and won above four thousand 
pounds. ' There,' said Fox, ' so should all usurpers be 
served !' He did still better; for he sent for his trades- 
men, and paid as far as the money would go. In the 

* This was the second Exhibition at Somerset House. The first 
was in May, 1780. 



190 Tonton 

mornings he continues his war on Lord North, but 
cannot break that bank. . . . 

" I told you in my last that Tonton was arrived. I 
brought him this morning to take possession of his new 
villa, but his inauguration has not been at all pacific. 
As he has already found out that he may be as despotic 
as at St. Joseph's, he began with exiling my beautiful 
little cat ; upon which, however, we shall not quite 
agree. He then flew at one of my dogs, who returned 
it by biting his foot till it bled, but was severely beaten 
for it. I immediately rung for Margaret to dress his 
foot ; but in the midst of my tribulation could not 
keep my countenance ; for she cried, ' Poor little thing, 
he does not understand my language !' I hope she will 
not recollect, too, that he is a Papist !" 

We have a further anecdote of Charles Fox told a 
few days later, also in a letter to Conway : 

" i had been to see if Lady Aylesbury was come to 
town : as I came up St. James's Street, I saw a cart 
and porters at Charles's door ; coppers and old chests 
of drawers loading. In short, his success at faro has 
awakened his host of creditors ; but unless his bank has 
swelled to the size of the Bank of England, it could not 
have yielded a sop apiece for each. Epsom, too, had 
been unpropitious ; and one creditor has actually 
seized and carried off his goods, which did not seem 
worth removing. As I returned full of this scene, whom 
should I find sauntering by my own door but Charles ? 
He came up, ?.nd talked to me at the coach-window on 



Charles Fox. 191 

the Marriage Bill,* with as much sang-froid as if he 
knew nothing of what had happened. I have no ad- 
miration for insensibility to one's own faults, especially 
when committed out of vanity. Perhaps the whole 
philosophy consisted in the commission. If you could 
have been as much to blame, the last thing you would 
bear well would be your own reflections. The more 
marvellous Fox's parts are, the more one is provoked at 
his follies, which comfort so many rascals and block- 
heads, and make all that is admirable and amiable in 
him only matter of regret to those who like him as I do.t 

* On the 7th of June, Mr. Fox moved for leave to bring in a bill 
to amend the Act of the 26th of George II., for preventing clandes- 
tine marriages. The bill passed the Commons, but was rejected by 
the Lords. 

t " Mr. Fox never had much intimate intercourse with Horace 
Walpole ; did not, I think, like him at all ; had no opinion of his 
judgment or conduct ; probably had imbibed some prejudice against 
him, for his ill-usage of his father ; and certainly entertained an 
unfavourable, and even unjust, opinion of his abilities as a writer." 
So says Lord Vassall-Holland in one of the passages from his pen 
printed in Russell's Memorials of Fox. See vol. i., p. 276. It may 
be mentioned here, that Lord Holland's Collections for the Life of 
Fox, which are contained in the work just referred to, include 
numerous extracts from manuscript papers of Horace Walpole. 
" These papers, the property of Lord Waldegrave, were lent to 
me," says Lord Holland, " and have been long in my possession." 
That the manuscripts to which Lord Holland thus had access com- 
prised the portion of Walpole's correspondence with Mann, which 
was first published in 1843, appears by several passages which his 
lordship quotes from these letters. Is it possible that this circum- 
stance may furnish a solution of the ethnological question, to 
which we have adverted on p. 141, as to the descent of Macaulay's 
New Zealander from Walpole's Peruvian? From 1831 Macaulay 
had been an habilud of Holland House. Trevelyan's " Life of Lord 
Macaulay," vol. i. p. 176, et seq. 



192 William Pitt. 

" I did intend to settle at Strawberry on Sunday ; but 
must return on Thursday, for a party made at Marl- 
borough House for Princess Amelia. I am continually 
tempted to retire entirely; and should, if I did not see 
how very unfit English tempers are for living quite out 
of the world. We grow abominably peevish and severe 
on others, if we are not constantly rubbed against and 
polished by them. I need not name friends and rela- 
tions of yours and mine as instances. My prophecy on 
the short reign of faro is verified already. The bankers 
find that all the calculated advantages of the game do 
not balance pinchbeck parolis and debts of honourable 
women. The bankers, I think, might have had a pre- 
vious and more generous reason, the very bad air of 
holding a bank : — but this country is as hardened 
against the petite morale, as against the greater. — 
What should I think of the world if I quitted it 
entirely?" 

Again a few days, and we come upon an early 
mention of the youthful William Pitt : " The young 
William Pitt has again displayed paternal oratory. 
The other day, on the Commission of Accounts, he 
answered Lord North, and tore him limb from limb. 
If Charles Fox could feel, one should think such a 
rival, with an unspotted character, would rouse him. 
What if a Pitt and Fox should again be rivals !" Some 
time later, Walpole asks Lady Ossory : " Apropos of 
bon-mots, has our lord told you that George Selwyn 
calls Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt ' the idle and the industrious 



Mrs. Hobarfs Sans Sonci. 193 

apprentices ' ? If he has not, I am sure you will thank 
me, Madam." 

In the summer of 1781, Horace has a touch of 
rheumatism, but still he keeps up his juvenile tone. 
Witness the two following letters to Lady Ossory : 

"Strawberry Hill, July 7, 1781. 

" You must be, or will be, tired of my letters, Madam ; 
every one is a contradiction to the last ; there is alter- 
nately a layer of complaints, and a layer of foolish 
spirits. To-day the wind is again in the dolorous 
corner. For these four days I have been confined 
with a pain and swelling in my face. The apothecary 
says it is owing to the long drought ; but as I should 
not eat grass were there ever such plenty, and as my 
cows, though starving, have no swelled cheeks, I do not 
believe him. I humbly attribute my frequent disorders 
to my longevity, and to that Proteus the gout, who is 
not the less himself for being incog. Excuses I have 
worn out, and, therefore, will not make any for not 
obeying your kind invitation again to Ampthill. I can 
only say, I go nowhere, even when Tonton is invited — 
except to balls— and yet though I am the last Vestris 
that has appeared, Mrs. Hobart did not invite me to 
her Sans Souci last week, though she had all my other 
juvenile contemporaries, Lady Berkeley, Lady Fitzroy, 
Lady Margaret Compton, and Mrs. French, etc. Per- 
haps you do not know that the lady of the fete, having 
made as many conquests as the King of Prussia, has 
borrowed the name of that hero's villa for her hut on 

13 



194 Improvements at Florence. 

Ham Common, where she has built two large rooms of 
timber under a cabbage. Her field officers, General 
French, General Compton, etc., were sweltered in the 
ball-room, and then frozen at supper in tents on the 
grass. She herself, as intrepid as King Frederic, led 
the ball, though dying of the toothache, which she had 
endeavoured to drown in laudanum ; but she has kept 
her bed ever since the campaign ended. 

" This is all I know in the world, for the war 
seems to have taken laudanum too, and to keep its bed. 

" I have received a letter to-day from Sir Horace 
Mann, who tells me the Great-Duke has been making 
wondrous improvements at Florence. He has made a 
passage through the Tribune, and built a brave new 
French room of stucco in white and gold, and placed 
the Niobe in it ; but as everybody is tired of her telling 
her old story, she and all the Master and Miss Niobes 
are orderly disposed round the chamber, and if anybody 
asks who they are, I suppose they answer, Francis 
Charles Ferdinand Ignatius Neopomucenus, or Maria 
Theresa Christina Beatrice, etc. Well, Madam, have 
I any cause to sigh that the pictures at Houghton are 
transported to the North Pole, if the Tribune at Flo- 
rence is demolished by Vandals, and Niobe and her 
progeny dance a cotillon ? O sublunary grandeur, short- 
lived as a butterfly ! We smile at a clown who graves the 
initials of his name, or the shape of his shoe, on the 
leads of a church, in hopes of being remembered, and 
yet he is as much known as king I don't know whom, 
who built the Pyramids to eternise his memory. Me- 



Dancing Feats. 195 

thinks Anacreon was the only sensible philosopher. If 
I loved wine, and should look well in a chaplet of roses, 
I would crown myself with flowers, and go tipsy to bed 
every night sans souci. 

"July 25, 1781. 

" Poor human nature, what a contradiction it is ! to- 
day it is all rheumatism and morality, and sits with a 
death's head before it : to-morrow it is dancing ! — Oh ! 
my Lady, my Lady, what will you say, when the next 
thing you hear of me after my last letter is, that I have 
danced three country-dances with a whole set, forty 
years younger than myself ! Shall not you think I have 
been chopped to shreds and boiled in Medea's kettle ? 
Shall not you expect to see a print of Vestris teaching 
me? — and Lord Brudenell dying with envy ? You may 
stare with all your expressive eyes, yet the fact is true. 
Danced — I do not absolutely say, danced — but I swam 
down three dances very gracefully, with the air that was 
so much in fashion after the battle of Oudenarde, and 
that was still taught when I was fifteen, and that I 
remember General Churchill practising before a glass in 
a gouty shoe. 

"To be sure you die with impatience to know the 
particulars. You must know then — for all my revels 
must out — I not only went five miles to Lady Ayles- 
ford's ball last Friday, but my nieces, the Waldegraves, 
desired me there to let them come to me for a few days, 
as they had been disappointed about a visit they were 
to make at another place ; but that is neither here nor 
there. Well, here they are, and last night we went to 

13— a 



196 Dancing- Feats. 

Lady Hertford at Ditton. Soon after, Lady North and 
her daughters arrived, and besides Lady Elizabeth and 
Lady Bell Conways, there were their brothers Hugh 
and George. All the jcuncsse strolled about the garden. 
We ancients, with the Earl and Colonel Keene, retired 
from the dew into the drawing-room. Soon after, the 
two youths and seven nymphs came in, and shut the 
door of the hall. In a moment, we heard a burst of 
laughter, and thought we distinguished something like 
the scraping of a fiddle. My curiosity was raised, I 
opened the door, and found four couples and a half 
standing up, and a miserable violin from the ale-house. 
' Oh,' said I, ' Lady Bell shall not want a partner ;' I 
threw away my stick, and me voila dansant comme un 
charme ! At the end of the third dance, Lord North 
and his son, in boots, arrived. ' Come,' said I, ' my 
Lord, you may dance, if I have ' — but it ended in my 
resigning my place to his son. 

" Lady North has invited us for to-morrow, and I 
shall reserve the rest of my letter for the second volume 
of my regeneration ; however, I declare I will not dance. 
I will not make myself too cheap ; I should have the 
Prince of Wales sending for me three or four times a 
week to hops in Eastcheap. As it is, I feel I shall have 
some difficulty to return to my old dowagers, at the 
Duchess of Montrose's, and shall be humming the 
Hempdressers, when they are scolding me for playing 
in flush. 

" Friday, the 27th. 
" I am not only a prophet, but have more command 



No Feathers at Court. 197 

of my passions than such impetuous gentry as prophets 
are apt to have. We found the fiddles as I foretold ; 
and yet I kept my resolution and did not dance, though 
the Sirens invited me, and though it would have shocked 
the dignity of old Tiffany Ellis, who would have thought 
it an indecorum. The two younger Norths and Sir 
Ralph Payne supplied my place. I played at cribbage 
with the matrons, and we came away at midnight. 
So if I now and then do cut a colt's tooth, I have 
it drawn immediately. I do not know a paragraph 
of news — the nearer the minister, the farther from 
politics. 

" P.S. My next jubilee dancing shall be with Lady 
Gertrude." 

Not long after the date of these letters, Mann sends 
news of further improvements at Florence. Walpole 
answers : 

" The decree* you sent me against high heads diverted 
me. It is as necessary here, but would not have such 
expeditious effect. The Queen has never admitted 
feathers at Court ; but, though the nation has grown 
excellent courtiers, Fashion remained in opposition, 
and not a plume less was worn anywhere else. Some 
centuries ago, the Clergy preached against monstrous 
head-dresses ; but Religion had no more power than 
our Queen. It is better to leave the Mode to its own 
vagaries ; if she is not contradicted, she seldom remains 
long in the same mood. She is very despotic ; Lut 

* An ordinance of the Great-Duke against high head-dresses. 



1 98 Highwaymen. 

though her reign is endless, her laws are repealed as 
fast as made." 

The frequency of highway robberies only a century 
ago sounds surprising to the present generation. 
Horace recounts to Lady Ossory an adventure of this 
kind which befell him and his friend and neighbour, 
Lady Browne, in the autumn of this jovial 1781 : 

" The night I had the honour of writing to your Lady- 
ship last, I was robbed — and, as if I were a sovereign 
or a nation, have had a discussion ever since whether it 
was not a neighbour who robbed me — and should it 
come to the ears of the newspapers, it might produce 
as ingenious a controversy amongst our anonymous wits 
as any of the noble topics I have been mentioning. 
Void le fait. Lady Browne and I were, as usual, going 
to the Duchess of Montrose at seven o'clock. The 
evening was very dark. In the close lane under her 
park-pale, and within twenty yards of the gate, a black 
figure on horseback pushed by between the chaise and 
the hedge on my side. I suspected it was a highway- 
man, and so I found did Lady Browne, for she was 
speaking and stopped. To divert her fears, I was just 
going to say, Is not that the apothecary going to the 
Duchess ? when I heard a voice cry ' Stop !' and the 
figure came back to the chaise. I had the presence of 
mind, before I let down the glass, to take out my watch 
and stuff it within my waistcoat under my arm. He 
said, ' Your purses and watches !' I replied, ' I have 
no watch.' ' Then your purse !' I gave it to him ; it 



Highwaymen. 199 

had nine guineas. It was so dark that I could not see 
his hand, but felt him take it. He then asked for Lady 
Browne's purse, and said, ' Don't be frightened ; I will 
not hurt you.' I said, ' No ; you won't frighten the 
lady ?' He replied, ' No ; I give you my word I will do 
you no hurt.' Lady Browne gave him her purse, and 
was going to add her watch, but he said, ' I am much 
obliged to you ! I wish you good-night !' pulled off his 
hat, and rode away. ' Well,' said I, ' Lady Browne, 
you will not be afraid of being robbed another time, for 
you see there is nothing in it.' ' Oh ! but I am,' said 
she, ' and now I am in terrors lest he should return, for 
I have given him a purse with only bad money that I 
carry on purpose.' ' He certainly will not open it 
directly,' said I, ' and at worst he can only wait for us 
at our return ; but I will send my servant back for a 
horse and a blunderbuss,' which I did. The next dis- 
tress was not to terrify the Duchess, who is so paralytic 
and nervous. I therefore made Lady Browne go into 
the parlour, and desired one of the Duchess's servants 
to get her a glass of water, while I went into the draw- 
ing-room to break it to the Duchess. ' Well,' said I, 
laughing to her and the rest of the company, ' you won't 
get much from us to-night.' ' Why,' said one of them, 
1 have you been robbed ?' ' Yes, a little,' said I. The 
Duchess trembled ; but it went off. Her groom of the 
chambers said not a word, but slipped out, and Lady 
Margaret and Miss Howe having servants there on 
horseback, he gave them pistols and despatched them 
different ways. This was exceedingly clever, for he 



200 Highwaymen. 

knew the Duchess would not have suffered it, as lately 
he had detected a man who had robbed her garden, and 
she would not allow him to take up the fellow. These 
servants spread the story, and when my footman 
arrived on foot, he was stopped in the street by the 
ostler of the ' George,' who told him the highwayman's 
horse was then in the stable ; but this part I must 
reserve for the second volume, for I have made this no 
story so long and so tedious that your Ladyship will 
not be able to read it in a breath ; and the second part 
is so much longer and so much less, contains so many 
examinations of witnesses, so many contradictions in 
the depositions, which I have taken myself, and, I must 
confess, with such abilities and shrewdness that I have 
found out nothing at all, that I think to defer the 
prosecution of my narrative till all the other inquisi- 
tions on the anvil are liquidated, lest your Ladyship's 
head, strong as it is, should be confounded, and you 
should imagine that Rodney or Ferguson was the 
person who robbed us in Twickenham Lane. I would 
not have detailed the story at all, if you were not in a 
forest, where it will serve to put you to sleep as well as 
a newspaper full of lies ; and I am sure there is as much 
dignity in it as in the combined fleet, and ours, popping 
in and out alternately, like a man and woman in a 
weather-house." 

A few months later he writes to his Countess : 

" Strawberry Hill, Aug. 31, 1782. 
" It is very strange indeed, Madam, that you should 
make me excuses for writing, or think that I have any- 



Highwaymen. 20 1 

thing better, or even more urgent, to do than to read 
your letters. It is very true that the Duchess de la 
Valliere, in a hand which I could not decypher, has 
recommended Count Soltikoff and his wife to me : but, 
oh ! my shame, I have not yet seen them. I did mean 
to go to town to-day on purpose, but I have had the 
gout in my right eyelid, and it was swelled yesterday as 
big as a walnut ; being now shrunk to less than a pis- 
tachio, I propose in two or three days to make my 
appearance. Luckily the Countess was born in Eng- 
land, the daughter of the former Czernichew, and she is 
in such terrors of highwaymen, that I shall be quit for 
a breakfast ; so it is an ill highwayman that blows 
nobody good. In truth, it would be impossible, in this 
region, to amass a set of company for dinner to meet 
them. The Hertfords, Lady Holdernesse, and Lady 
Mary Coke did dine here on Thursday, but were armed 
as if going to Gibraltar ; and Lady Cecilia Johnston 
would not venture even from Petersham — for in the 
town of Richmond they rob even before dusk — to such 
perfection are all the arts brought ! Who would have 
thought that the war with America would make it 
impossible to stir from one village to another ? yet so it 
literally is. The Colonies took off all our commodities 
down to highwaymen. Now being forced to mew, and 
then turn them out, like pheasants, the roads are stocked 
with them, and they are so tame that they even come 
into houses. 

" I have just been reading a most entertaining book, 
which I will recommend to you, as you are grown anti- 



202 Loss of the " Royal George." 

quaries : I don't know whether it is published yet, for 
the author sent it to me. Part was published some 
time ago in the ' Archseologia,' and is almost the only 
paper in that mass of rubbish that has a grain of 
common sense. It is ' Mr. E. King on ancient Castles.' 
You will see how comfortably and delectably our potent 
ancestors lived, when in the constant state of war to 
which we are coming. Earls, barons, and their fair 
helpmates lived pell-mell in dark dungeons with their 
own soldiers, as the poorest cottagers do now with their 
pigs. I shall repent decking Strawberry so much, if I 
must turn it into a garrison. 

" Mr. Vernon was your Ladyship's informant about 
the Soltikoffs ; but he gave me more credit for my 
intended civilities than I deserved. The French do 
not conceive, when they address strangers to us, that we 
do not at all live in their style. It is no trouble to 
them, who have miscellaneous dinners or suppers, to 
ask one or two more ; nor are they at any expense in 
language, as everybody speaks French. In the private 
way in which I live, it is troublesome to give a formal 
dinner to foreigners, and more so to find company for 
them in a circle of dowagers, who would only jabber 
English scandal out of the Morning Post. . . . 

"Just this moment I hear the shocking loss of the 
Royal George I Admiral Kempenfelt is a loss indeed ; 
but I confess I feel more for the hundreds of poor babes 
who have lost their parents ! If one grows ever so 
indifferent, some new calamity calls one back to this 
deplorable war ! If one is willing to content one's self, 



Mrs. Siddons. 203 

in a soaking autumn, with a match broken, or with the 
death of a Prince Duodecimus, a clap of thunder 
awakens one, and one hears that Britain herself has 
lost an arm or a leg. I have been expecting a deluge, 
and a famine, and such casualties as enrich a Sir 
Richard Baker ; but we have all King David's options 
at once ! and what was his option before he was 
anointed, freebooting too ? 

" Drowned as we are, the country never was in such 
beauty ; the herbage and leafage are luxurious. The 
Thames gives itself Rhone airs, and almost foams ; it is 
none of your home-brewed rivers that Mr. Brown makes 
with a spade and a watering-pot. Apropos, Mr. Duane,* 
like a good housewife, in the middle of his grass-plot, has 
planted a pump and a watering-trough for his cow, and 
I suppose on Saturdays dries his towels and neckcloths 
on his orange-trees ; but I must have done, or the post 
will be gone." 

At the end of 1782, Mrs. Siddons was the talk of the 
town. Prejudiced as Walpole was apt to be in his 
judgments of actors, as of authors, his impressions of 
this famous actress will be read with interest : 

" I have been for two days in town, and seen Mrs. 
Siddons. She pleased me beyond my expectation, but 
not up to the admiration of the ton, two or three of 
whom were in the same box with me. . . . Mr. Craw- 
ford asked me if I did not think her the best actress I 

* A neighbour at Twickenham. 



204 Mrs. Siddons 

ever saw ? 1 said, ' By no means ; we old folks were 
apt to be prejudiced in favour of our first impressions.' 
She is a good figure, handsome enough, though neither 
nose nor chin according to the Greek standard, beyond 
which both advance a good deal. Her hair is either 
red, or she has no objection to its being thought so, and 
had used red powder. Her voice is clear and good ; 
but I thought she did not vary its modulations enough, 
nor ever approach enough to the familiar — but this 
may come when more habituated to the awe of the 
audience of the capital. Her action is proper, but with 
little variety ; when without motion, her arms are not 
genteel. Thus you see all my objections are very 
trifling ; but what I really wanted, but did not find, was 
originality, which announces genius, and without both 
which I am never intrinsically pleased. All Mrs. 
Siddons did, good sense or good instruction might give. 
I dare to say, that were I one-and- twenty, I should 
have thought her marvellous ; but alas ! I remember 
Mrs. Porter and the Dumesnil — and remember every 
accent of the former in the very same part. Yet this 
is not entirely prejudice : don't I equally recollect the 
whole progress of Lord Chatham and Charles Towns- 
hend, and does it hinder my thinking Mr. Fox a 
prodigy ? — Pray don't send him this paragraph too." 

Again : 

" Mrs. Siddons continues to be the mode, and to be 
modest and sensible. She declines great dinners, and 
says her business and the cares of her family take up 



Peace. 205 

her whole time. When Lord Carlisle carried her the 
tribute-money from Brooks's, he said she was not 
manieree enough. ' I suppose she was grateful,' said 
my niece, Lady Maria. Mrs. Siddons was desired to 
play ' Medea ' and ' Lady Macbeth.' — * No,' she replied 
' she did not look on them as female characters.' She 
was questioned about her transactions with Garrick : 
she said, ' He did nothing but put her out ; that he 
told her she moved her right hand when it should have 
been her left. In short,' said she, ' I found I must not 
shade the tip of his nose.' " 

The war was now over. Lord North had fallen ; his 
successor, Lord Rockingham, was dead ; and Lord Shel- 
burne, who had grasped the helm in spite of Fox, had to 
meet the demands of the victorious Colonists and their 
French allies, with the certainty that whatever he 
arranged would be distasteful to his countrymen, and 
bitterly opposed by the partisans both of his rival and of 
North. With the first weeks of 1783 came news of peace. 
Horace writes about it, in almost the same words, to 
Mann and Lady Ossory, his two chief correspondents 
at this time : " Peace is arrived. I cannot express how 
glad I am. I care not a straw what the terms are, 
which I believe I know more imperfectly than anybody 
in London. I am not apt to love details — my wish was 
to have peace, and the next to see America secure of its 
liberty. Whether it will make good use of it, is another 
point. It has an opportunity that never occurred in 
the world before, of being able to select the best parts 
of every known constitution ; but I suppose it will not, 



206 Consequences of Peace. 

as too prejudiced against royalty to adopt it, even as a 
corrective of aristocracy and democracy." He antici- 
pates that highway robberies will grow more daring on 
the disbanding of troops, and that there will be an 
inundation of French visitors. In less than six months 
he was able to boast that both his prophecies had been 
fulfilled. In June, he describes how, on a dark and 
rainy night, Strawberry Hill was invaded by the French 
Ambassador at the head of a large party : 

" Of all houses upon earth, mine, from the painted 
glass and over-hanging trees, wants the sun the most; 
besides the Star Chamber and passage being obscured 
on purpose to raise the Gallery. They ran their fore- 
heads against Henry VII., and took the grated door of 
the Tribune for the dungeon of the castle. I mustered 
all the candlesticks in the house, but before they could 
be lighted up, the young ladies, who, by the way, are 
extremely natural, agreeable, and civil, were seized 
with a panic of highwaymen, and wanted to go. I 
laughed, and said, I believed there was no danger, for 
that I had not been robbed these two years. However, 
I was not quite in the right ; they were stopped in 
Knightsbridge by two footpads, but Lady Pembroke 
having lent them a servant besides their own, they 
escaped." 

Shortly afterwards he writes to Mann: 

" We have swarms of French daily ; but they come 
as if they had laid wagers that there is no such place as 
England, and only wanted to verify its existence, or 



The Coalition. 207 

that they had a mind to dance a minuet on English 
ground ; for they turn on their heel the moment after 
landing. Three came to see this house last week, and 
walked through it literally while I wrote eight lines of a 
letter ; for I heard them go up the stairs, and heard 
them go down, exactly in the time I was finishing no 
longer a paragraph. It were happy tor me had nobody 
more curiosity than a Frenchman ; who is never struck 
with anything but what he has seen every day at Paris. 
I am tormented all day and every day by people that 
come to see my house, and have no enjoyment of it in 
summer. It would be even in vain to say that the 
plague is here. I remember such a report in London 
when I was a child, and my uncle, Lord Townshend, 
then Secretary of State, was forced to send guards to 
keep off the crowd from the house in which the 
plague was said to be ; they would go and see the 
plague !" 

Walpole apologises to his diplomatic correspondent for 
dwelling on such trifling topics. " The Peace," he says, 
" has closed the chapter of important news, which was 
all our correspondence lived on." The period of dulness 
and inaction, however, came to an end with the close of 
the Parliamentary vacation. The Coalition Government 
of Fox and Lord North, which had superseded Lord 
Shelburne in the spring, was now fairly brought to the 
bar of public opinion. Walpole, who had offended Fox's 
adherents by the part he had played in the intrigues* 

• There can be no doubt that Horace about this time, as on 
former occasions, had dreamed of seeing Conway in the position of 



2o8 The Rivals. 

which followed on the death of Lord Rockingham, 
sought to retrieve his character by an eager support of 
the new Administration. He was loud in his praises of 
Fox's masterly eloquence and strong sense. He now 
disparages Fox's chief opponent. " His competitor, 
Mr. Pitt," says Horace, " appears by no means an 
adequate rival. Just like their fathers, Mr. Pitt has 
brilliant language, Mr. Fox solid sense ; and such 
luminous powers of displaying it clearly, that mere 
Eloquence is but a Bristol stone, when set by the 
diamond Reason." The country at this moment was 
agitated by the debates on Fox's celebrated India Bill. 
This measure was being carried by triumphant majori- 
ties through the Lower House, and, as Walpole thought, 
the Opposition did not expect to succeed even in the 
House of Lords. He goes so far as to add, " Mr. Pitt's 
reputation is much sunk ; nor, though he is a much 
more correct logician than his father, has he the same 
firmness and perseverance. It is no wonder that he 
was dazzled by his own premature fame ; yet his late 
checks may be of use to him, and teach him to appre- 
ciate his strength better, or to wait till it is confirmed. 
Had he listed under Mr. Fox, who loved and courted 

Prime Minister. The General had taken a prominent part in 
the last attacks upon Lord North, and when the latter gave 
place to Lord Rockingham's second Administration, the services 
of the former were requited by the office of Commander-in- 
Chief, with a seat in the Cabinet. But Walpole's illusion about his 
friend was finally dispelled when, in the search for a leader which 
went on during and after Lord Rockingham's last illness, it ap- 
peared that Conway's name occurred to no one but himself. — See 
Walpole to Mason, May 7, 1882, and to Mann, July 1, 1782. 



Political Excitement. 209 

him, he would not only have discovered modesty, but 
have been more likely to succeed him, than by com- 
mencing his competitor." This was written on the 5th 
of December, 1783. Ten days later the India Bill was 
defeated in the House of Lords ; the King at once dis- 
missed the Coalition ; and before the end of the year 
Pitt was installed as head of the Government, a posi- 
tion which he retained for the rest of Walpole's life. 
The struggle which the new Ministry had to maintain 
for several weeks against an adverse majority in the 
House of Commons is matter of familiar history which 
needs not here be dwelt upon. 

The intense excitement which these events created 
throughout the country is faithfully reflected in Wal- 
pole's correspondence. We find them producing a 
rupture between him and his correspondent of many 
years' standing, the poet Mason, which was not healed 
till shortly before the deaths of the parties. And 
in writing to Mann, Walpole several times refers to 
the general ferment. Thus he says : " Politics have 
engrossed all conversation, and stifled other events, 
if any have happened. Indeed our ladies, who used 
to contribute to enliven correspondence, are become 
politicians, and, as Lady Townley says, ' squeeze a 
little too much lemon into conversation.' They have 
been called back a little to their own profession — dress, 
by a magnificent ball which the Prince of Wales gave 
two nights ago to near six hundred persons, to which 
the Amazons of both parties were invited ; and not a 
scratch was given or received." Again, in announcing 

14 



210 The Elections. 

the dissolution of Parliament : " All the island will be 
a scene of riot, and probably of violence. The parties 
are not separated in gentle mood : there will, they say, 
be contested elections everywhere : consequently vast 
expense and animosities. . . We have no private 
news at all. Indeed, politics are all in all. I question 
whether any woman will have anything to do with 
a man of a different party. Little girls say, ' Pray, 
Miss, of which side are you ?' I heard of one that 
said, ' Mama and I cannot get Papa over to our 
side !' . . To the present drama, Elections, I shall 
totally shut my ears. I hated elections forty years 
ago ; and, when I went to White's, preferred a con- 
versation on Newmarket to one on elections : for the 
language of the former I did not understand, and, 
consequently, did not listen to ; the other, being uttered 
in common phrase, made me attend, whether I would 
or not. When such subjects are on the tapis, they 
make me a very insipid correspondent. One cannot 
talk of what one does not care about ; and it would be 
jargon to you, if I did : however, do not imagine but I 
allow a sufficient quantity of dulness to my time of life. 
I have kept up a correspondence with you with tolerable 
spirit for three-and-forty years together, without our 
once meeting. Can you wonder that my pen is worn 
to the stump? You see it does not abandon you ; nor, 
though conscious of its own decay, endeavour to veil it 
by silence. The Archbishop of Gil Bias has long been 
a lesson to me to watch over my own ruins ; but I do 
not extend that jealousy of vanity to commerce with 



The Elections. 211 

an old friend. You knew me in my days of folly 
and riotous spirit ; why should I hide my dotage from 
you, which is not equally my fault and reproach ? 

In the middle of the elections, Horace writes once 
more: 

"The scene is wofully changed for the Opposition, 
though not half the new Parliament is yet chosen. 
Though they still contest a very few counties and some 
boroughs, they own themselves totally defeated. They 
reckoned themselves sure of two hundred and forty 
members ; they probably will not have an hundred and 
fifty ; and, amongst them, not some capital leaders, — 
perhaps not the Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Fox, cer- 
tainly not the late Commander-in-Chief of the Army, 
General Conway. In short, between the industry of 
the Court and the India Company, and that momentary 
frenzy that sometimes seizes a whole nation, as if it 
were a vast animal, such aversion to the Coalition and 
such a detestation of Mr. Fox have seized the country, 
that, even where omnipotent gold retains its influence, 
the elected pass through an ordeal of the most virulent 
abuse. The great Whig families, the Cavendishes, 
Rockinghams, Bedfords, have lost all credit in their 
own counties; nay, have been tricked out of seats 
where the whole property was their own ; and in some 
of those cases a royal finger has too evidently tampered, 
as well as singularly and revengefully towards Lord 
North and Lord Hertford ; the latter of whom, how- 

14 — 2 



212 The Westminster Election. 

ever, is likely to have six of his own sons* in the House 
of Commons — an extraordinary instance. Such a pro- 
scription, however, must have sown so deep resentment 
as it was not wise to provoke ; considering that perma- 
nent fortune is a jewel that in no crown is the most to 
be depended upon ! 

" When I have told you these certain truths, and 
when you must be aware that this torrent of unpopu- 
larity broke out in the capital, will it not sound like a 
contradiction if I affirm that Mr. Fox himself is still 
struggling to be chosen for Westminster, and maintains 
so sturdy a fight, that Sir Cecil Wray, his antagonist, is 
not yet three hundred ahead of him, though the Court 
exerts itself against him in the most violent manner, by 
mandates, arts, etc. — nay, sent at once a body of two 
hundred and eighty of the Guards to give their votes as 
householders, which is legal, but which my father in the 
most quiet seasons would not have dared to do ! At 
first, the contest threatened to be bloody : Lord Hoodt 
being the third candidate, and on the side of the Court, 
a mob of three hundred sailors undertook to drive away 
the opponents; but the Irish chairmen, J being retained 
by Mr. Fox's party, drove them back to their element, 
and cured the tars of their ambition of a naval victory. 
In truth, Mr. Fox has all the popularity in Westminster ; 
and, indeed, is so amiable and winning, that, could he 
have stood in person all over England, I question 
whether he would not have carried the Parliament. 

* He did get but five of his sons into that Parliament. — Walpole 

t Lord Hood was an admiral. 

£ Almost all the hackney-chairmen in London were Irish. 



The Westminster Election. 213 

The beldams hate him ; but most of the pretty women 
in London are indefatigable in making interest for him, 
the Duchess of Devonshire in particular.* I am ashamed 
to say how coarsely she has been received by some 
worse than tars ! But me nothing has shocked so much 
as what I heard this morning : at Dover they roasted a 
poor fox alive by the most diabolic allegory ! — a savage 
meanness that an Iroquois would not have committed. 
Base, cowardly wretches ! how much nobler to have 
hurried to London and torn Mr. Fox himself piece- 
meal ! I detest a country inhabited by such stupid 
barbarians. I will write no more to-night ; I am in a 



passion 



A fortnight later he adds : 

" Most elections are over ; and, if they were not, 
neither you nor I care about such details. I have no 
notion of filling one's head with circumstances of 
which, in six weeks, one is to discharge it for ever. 
Indeed, it is well that I live little in the world, or I 
should be obliged to provide myself with that viaticum 
for common conversation. Our ladies are grown such 
vehement politicians, that no other topic is admissible ; 
nay, I do not know whether you must not learn our 
politics for the conversations at Florence, — at least, if 
Paris gives the ton to Italy, as it used to do. There are 

* " The fact of the Duchess having purchased the vote of a stub- 
born butcher by a kiss, is, we believe, undoubted. It was probably 
during the occurrence of these scenes that the well-known compli- 
ment was paid to her by an Irish mechanic : ' I could light my pipe 
at her eyes.' "—Jesse's " Selwyn," vol. iv., p. 118. 



214 Political Caricatures. 

as warm parties for Mr. Fox or Mr. Pitt at Versailles 
and Amsterdam as in Westminster. At the first, I 
suppose, they exhale in epigrams ; are expressed at the 
second by case-knives ; at the last they vent themselves 
in deluges of satiric prints,* though with no more wit 
than there is in a case-knife. I was told last night 
that our engraved pasquinades for this winter, at 
twelvepence or sixpence a-piece, would cost six or 
seven pounds." 

In the result, Fox was returned, but Conway lost his 
seat. Walpole congratulates the latter on his retire- 
ment from public life : 

" Berkeley Square, Wednesday, May 5, 1784. 

" Your cherries, for aught I know, may, like Mr. 
Pitt, be half ripe before others are in blossom ; but at 
Twickenham, I am sure, I could find dates and pome- 
granates on the quickset hedges, as soon as a cherry in 
swaddling-clothes on my walls. The very leaves on the 
horse-chesnuts are little things, that cry and are 
afraid of the north wind, and cling to the bough 
as if old poker was coming to take them away. For my 
part, I have seen nothing like spring but a chimney- 

* " Fox said that Sayers's caricatures had done him more mischief 
than the debates in Parliament, or the works of the press. The 
prints of Carlo Khan, Fox running away with the India House, Fox 
and Burke quitting Paradise when turned out of office, and many 
others of these publications, had certainly a vast effect on the public 
mind." — Lord Chancellor Eldon, " Life of Twiss," vol. i., p. 162. 
This very apt quotation is made by Mr. P. Cunningham in his 
valuable edition of Walpole's Letters. 



Conway s Retirement. 215 

sweeper's garland ; and yet I have been three days in 
the country — and the consequence was, that I was glad 
to come back to town. 

" I do not wonder that you feel differently ; anything 
is warmth and verdure when compared to poring over 
memorials. In truth, I think you will be much happier 
for being out of Parliament. You could do no good 
there ; you have no views of ambition to satisfy ; and 
when neither duty nor ambition calls (I do not conde- 
scend to name avarice, which never is to be satisfied, 
nor deserves to be reasoned with, nor has any place in 
your breast), I cannot conceive what satisfaction an 
elderly man can have in listening to the passions or 
follies of others : nor is eloquence such a banquet, when 
one knows that, whoever the cooks are, whatever the 
sauces, one has eaten as good beef or mutton before, 
and, perhaps, as well dressed. It is surely time to live 
for one's self, when one has not a vast while to live ; 
and you, I am persuaded, will live the longer for lead- 
ing a country life. How much better to be planting, 
nay, making experiments on smoke* (if not too dear), 
than reading applications from officers, a quarter of 
whom you could not serve, nor content three quarters ! 
You had not time for necessary exercise ; and, I be- 
lieve, would have blinded yourself. In short, if you 
will live in the air all day, be totally idle, and not read 
or write a line by candle-light, and retrench your suppers, 
I shall rejoice in your having nothing to do but that 

* Alluding to some coke-ovens for which Conway obtained a 
patent. 



2 1 6 Conway s Retirement. 

dreadful punishment, pleasing yourself. Nobody has 
any claims on you ; you have satisfied every point of 
honour ; you have no cause for being particularly grate- 
ful to the Opposition ; and you want no excuse for 
living for yourself. Your resolutions on economy are 
not only prudent, but just ; and, to say the truth, I 
believe that if you had continued at the head of the 
Army, you would have ruined yourself. You have too 
much generosity to have curbed yourself, and would 
have had too little time to attend to doing so. I know 
by myself how pleasant it is to have laid up a little 
for those I love, for those that depend on me, and for 
old servants. . . . 

" You seem to think that I might send you more 
news. So I might, if I would talk of elections ; but 
those, you know, I hate, as, in general, I do all details. 
How Mr. Fox has recovered such a majority I do not 
guess ; still less do I comprehend how there could be so 
many that had not voted, after the poll had lasted so 
long.* Indeed, I should be sorry to understand such 
mysteries. . . . 

" P.S. The summer is come to town, but I hope is 
gone into the country too." 

* Mr. Pitt says, in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce, on the 8th of April, 
" Westminster goes on well, in spite of the Duchess of Devonshire 
and the other women of the people ; but when the poll will close is 
uncertain." At the close of it, on the 17th of May, the numbers 
were, for Hood, 6,694 ; Fox, 6,223 ; Wray, 5,998. Walpole, whose 
delicate health at this time confined him almost entirely to his 
house, went in a sedan-chair to give his vote for Mr. Fox. 



Lady Harrington. 217 

The new Parliament having met, and disclosed a 
majority of more than two to one in favour of the 
Government, Walpole dismisses politics and returns to 
lighter topics. He writes to Conway : 

"Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1784. 

" Instead of coming to you, I am thinking of packing 
up and going to town for winter, so desperate is the 
weather! I found a great fire at Mrs. Clive's this 
evening, and Mr. Raftor hanging over it like a smoked 
ham. They tell me my hay will be all spoiled for want 
of cutting ; but I had rather it should be destroyed by 
standing than by being mowed, as the former will cost 
me nothing but the crop, and 'tis very dear to make 
nothing but a water-souchy of it. 

" You know I have lost a niece, and found another 
nephew: he makes the fifty-fourth, reckoning both 
sexes. We are certainly an affectionate family, for of 
late we do nothing but marry one another. Have not 
you felt a little twinge in a remote corner of your heart 
on Lady Harrington's death ?* She dreaded death so 
extremely that I am glad she had not a moment to be 
sensible of it. I have a great affection for sudden 
deaths ; they save one's self and everybody else a deal of 
ceremony. 

" The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough breakfasted 
here on Monday, and seemed much pleased, though it 

* The Lady Caroline Petersham of the frolic at Vauxhall, related 
in a former chapter. Conway in his youth had been enamoured of 
her. 



2i3 Balloons. 

rained the whole time with an Egyptian darkness. I 
should have thought there had been deluges enough to 
destroy all Egypt's other plagues : but the newspapers 
talk of locusts ; I suppose relations of your beetles, 
though probably not so fond of green fruit ; for the 
scene of their campaign is Queen Square, Westminster, 
where there certainly has not been an orchard since the 
reign of Canute. 

" I have, at last, seen an air-balloon ; just as I once 
did see a tiny review, by passing one accidentally on 
Hounslow Heath. I was going last night to Lady 
Onslow at Richmond, and over Mr. Cambridge's field I 
saw a bundle in the air not bigger than the moon, and 
she herself could not have descended with more com- 
posure if she had expected to find Endymion fast 
asleep. It seemed to 'light on Richmond Hill ; but 
Mrs. Hobart was going by, and her coiffure prevented 
my seeing it alight. The papers say, that a balloon has 
been made at Paris representing the castle of Stock- 
holm, in compliment to the King of Sweden ; but that 
they are afraid to let it off: so, I suppose, it will be 
served up to him in a dessert. No great progress, 
surely, is made in these airy navigations, if they are 
still afraid of risking the necks of two or three subjects 
for the entertainment of a visiting sovereign. There is 
seldom a. feu de pie for the birth of a Dauphin that does 
not cost more lives. I thought royalty and science 
never haggled about the value of blood when experi- 
ments are in the question. 

" I shall wait for summer before I make you a visit. 



Illness. 219 

Though I dare to say that you have converted your 
smoke-kilns into a manufactory of balloons, pray do 
not erect a Strawberry castle in the air for my recep- 
tion, if it will cost a pismire a hair of its head. Good- 
night ! I have ordered my bed to be heated as hot as 
an oven, and Tonton and I must go into it." 

The recent invention of balloons was at this time 
exciting general interest. " This enormous capital," 
says Walpole, " that must have some occupation, is 
most innocently amused with those philosophic play- 
things, air-balloons. An Italian, one Lunardi, is the 
first airgonaut that has mounted into the clouds in this 
country. He is said to have bought three or four thou- 
sand pounds in the stocks, by exhibiting his person, his 
balloon, and his dog and cat, at the Pantheon for a 
shilling each visitor. Blanchard, a Frenchman, is his 
rival ; and I expect that they will soon have an air-fight 
in the clouds, like a stork and a kite." 

This year ended for our author with a severe attack 
of gout. He replies to inquiries from Lady Ossory : 

" Berkeley Square, Dec. 27, 1784. 
" I am told that I am in a prodigious fine way ; 
which, being translated into plain English, means that 
I have suffered more sharp pain these two days than in 
all the moderate fits together that I have had for these 
last nine years : however, Madam, I have one great 
blessing, there is drowsiness in all the square hollows of 
the red-hot bars of the gridiron on which I lie, so that 
I scream and fall asleep by turns, like a babe that is 



220 Recovery. 

cutting its first teeth. I can add nothing to this exact 
account, which I only send in obedience to your Lady- 
ship's commands, which I received just now : I did 
think on Saturday that the worst was over." 

On his recovery, he writes : 

" I am always thanking you, Madam, I think, for 
kind inquiries after me ; but it is not my fault that I am 
so often troublesome ! I would it were otherwise ! — 
however, I do not complain. I have attained another 
resurrection, and was so glad of my liberty, that I went 
out both Saturday and Sunday, though so snowy a day 
and so rainy a day never were invented. Yet I have 
not ventured to see Mrs. Jordan,* nor to skate in Hyde 
Park. We had other guess winters in my time ! — fine 
sunny mornings, with now and then a mild earthquake, 
just enough to wake one, and rock one to sleep again 
comfortably. My recoveries surprise me more than my 
fits ; but I am quite persuaded now that I know exactly 
how I shall end : as I am a statue of chalk, I shall 
crumble to powder, and then my inside will be blown 
away from my terrace, and hoary-headed Margaret will 
tell the people that come to see my house, — 

' One morn we miss'd him on the 'custom'd hill.' 

When that is the case, Madam, don't take the pains 
of inquiring more ; as I shall leave no body to return 
to, even Cagliostro would bring me back to no pur- 
pose." 

* At this time commencing her career as an actress. 



Lady Correspondents. 221 



CHAPTER IX. 

Lady Correspondents. — Madame de Genlis. — Miss Burney and 
Hannah More. — Deaths of Mrs. Clive and Sir Horace Mann. — 
Story of Madame de Choiseul. — Richmond. — Queensberry House. 
— Warren Hastings. — Genteel Comedy. — St. Swithin. — Riverside 
Conceits. — Lord North. — The Theatre again. — Gibbon's History. 
— Sheridan. — Conway's Comedy. — A Turkish War. — Society 
Newspapers. — The Misses Berry. — Bonner's Ghost. — The 
Arabian Nights. — King's College Chapel. — Richmond Society. — 
New Arrivals. — The Berrys visit Italy. — A Farewell Letter. 

No one who has looked through Walpole's published 
letters can have failed to observe that the great majority 
of those which belong to the last twelve or thirteen 
years of the writer's life are addressed to female cor- 
respondents. This is not an accidental circumstance. 
It is clear that, as his old friends dropped off, Horace 
supplied their places, in almost every instance, with 
women. The antiquary Pinkerton succeeds to the 
antiquary Cole,* but Montagu and Mason, Sir Horace 
Mannf and Lord Strafford, % had no successors of their 
own sex. Except when literary topics were on the 
carpet, Walpole, in his latter days, shrank from en- 

* Cole died 16th December, 1782. 

t See page 226. 

J Lord Strafford died ioth March, 1791. 



222 Madame de Genlis. 

gaging in discussion with younger and more vigorous 
men. In several passages of his correspondence, he 
acknowledges this feeling of reserve and shyness. But 
with ladies of every class he was always at home and at 
ease. Old or young, grave or gay, English or French, 
they found him their devoted servant, full of nicely 
adjusted gallantry, never too busy to entertain with 
gossip and letters, ever ready to assist with advice, and 
when occasion required, with the contents of a well- 
stocked purse. Thus, from the year 1785 onwards, we 
have him generally in correspondence with ladies, and 
as often as not, about ladies. During the first part of 
this period especially, sketches of well-known women 
meet us, thrown off at frequent intervals by his prac- 
tised pen. Here is an account of a visit from Madame 
de Genlis in July, 1785 : 

" You surprise me, Madam, by saying the newspapers 
mention my disappointment of seeing Madame de 
Genlis. How can such arrant trifles spread? It is 
very true, that as the hill would not go to see Madame 
de Genlis, she has come to see the hill. Ten days ago 
Mrs. Cosway sent me a note that Madame, desired a 
ticket for Strawberry Hill. I thought I could not do 
less than offer her a breakfast, and named yesterday 
se'nnight. Then came a message that she must go to 
Oxford and take her Doctor's degree ; and then another, 
that I should see her yesterday, when she did arrive 
with Miss Wilkes and Pamela, whom she did not even 
present to me, and whom she has educated to be very 



Madame de Genlis. 11^ 

like herself in the face. I told her I could not attribute 
the honour of her visit but to my late dear friend 
Madame du Deffand. It rained the whole time, and 
was dark as midnight, so that she could scarce distin- 
guish a picture ; but you will want an account of her, 
and not of what she saw or could not see. Her person 
is agreeable, and she seems to have been pretty. Her 
conversation is natural and reasonable, not prtfcieuse and 
affected, and searching to be eloquent, as I had ex- 
pected. I asked her if she had been pleased with 
Oxford, meaning the buildings, not the wretched oafs 
that inhabit it. She said she had had little time ; that 
she had wished to learn their plan of education, which, 
as she said sensibly, she supposed was adapted to our 
Constitution. I could have told her that it is directly 
repugnant to our Constitution, and that nothing is 
taught there but drunkenness and prerogative, or, in 
their language, Church and King. I asked if it is true 
that the new edition of Voltaire's works is prohibited : 
she replied, severely, — and then condemned those who 
write against religion and government, which was a 
little unlucky before her friend Miss Wilkes. She stayed 
two hours, and returns to France to-day to her duty. I 
really do not know whether the Due de Chartres is in 
England or not. She did lodge in his house in Port- 
land Place ; but at Paris, I think, has an hotel where 
she educates his daughters." 

A little later, he reports : " Dr. Burney and his 
daughter, Evelina-Cecilia, have passed a day and a 



224 Miss Burney and Hannah More. 

half with me.* He is lively and agreeable ; she half- 
and-half sense and modesty, which possess her so 
entirely, that not a cranny is left for affectation or 
pretension. Oh ! Mrs. Montagu, you are not above 
half as accomplished." This was an unusual tribute 
from the fastidious Horace. 

Here, too, we must introduce the name of another 
literary lady, whose acquaintance with our author, 
begun some time previously, ripened about this date 
into an occasional exchange of letters. Hannah More,t 
then one of the Vesey coterie in Clarges Street, which, 
however, she presently quitted, ranked, we conceive, in 
Walpole's estimation, about midway between Mrs. 
Montagu and Miss Burney. Writing to Hannah, not 
long after her retirement from London, he says : " The 
last time I saw her," that is Mrs. Vesey, " Miss Burney 
passed the evening there, looking quite recovered and 

* Very shortly after this visit, Miss Burney was appointed one of 
the Keepers of the Queen's Robes in the room of Madame Hagger- 
dorn, who retired. 

t Born in 1745, at Stapleton, near Bristol, where her father 
had the care of the Charity School. Early in life, she joined 
her sisters in establishing a school for young ladies, which had 
great success. In 1773 she published a pastoral drama, called 
" The Search after Happiness," and in 1774 a tragedy founded 
on the story of Regulus. These works led to her introduction 
into London society. Her tragedy " Percy " was produced at 
Covent Garden on the 10th of December, 1777, and ran nineteen 
nights. About this time also she wrote " The Fatal Falsehood," 
and " Sacred Dramas." In 1786, when she was forty years of age, 
she withdrew from London, and settled at Cowslip Green, near 
her native place, in which district she spent the remainder of her 
life, devoting herself to works of charity, and the composition of 
religious books. 



Death of Mrs. Clive. 225 

well, and so cheerful and agreeable, that the Court 
seems only to have improved the ease of her manner, 
instead of stamping more reserve on it, as I feared : 
but what slight graces it can give, will not compensate 
to us and the world for the loss of her company and 
her writings. Not but that some young ladies who can 
write, can stifle their talent as much as if they were 
under lock and key in the royal library. I do not see 
but a cottage is as pernicious to genius as the Queen's 
waiting-room." 

Walpole had laughed at the " Blue-stockings," but 
he bows graciously to the authors of " Cecilia " and 
" Percy," and marks by an altered style of address his 
sense of the difference between the tone of these ladies 
and that of the Lady Ossorys and Kitty Clives with 
whom his youth and middle life had been spent. Poor 
Kitty's old age of cards came to an end before the close 
of 1785, and Cliveden, which she had occupied for more 
than thirty years, stood for awhile untenanted. Horace 
lamented the loss of his old friend and neighbour, but 
she was several years senior to himself, and her death 
was not unexpected. The pair had lived so much 
together that probably few letters passed between 
them : none have been preserved, and the removal of 
the lady makes no gap in the gentleman's correspon- 
dence. It is otherwise with the next name which was 
struck from Walpole's list of old familiar acquaintances. 
Shortly after losing a friend from whom he was never 
long parted, he lost the friend whom he never met. 
No long time had elapsed since Walpole had written to 

15 



226 Death of Sir Horace Mann. 

Mann : " Shall we not be very venerable in the annals 
of friendship ? What Orestes and Pylades ever wrote 
to each other for four-and-forty years without meeting ? 
A correspondence of near half a century is not to be 
paralleled in the annals of the Post Office. " Again, 
about the time of Mrs. Clive's death: "Now I think 
we are like Castor and Pollux ; when one rises, t'other 
sets ; when you can write, I cannot. I have got a very 

sharp attack of gout in my right hand Your 

being so well is a great comfort to me." Despite this 
congratulation, however, the Ambassador was very near 
to his final setting. He died at Florence on the 16th 
of November, 1786, after a long illness, during the 
latter part of which he was apparently not in a con- 
dition to receive letters. Walpole's last letter to him 
is dated June 22, 1786. It makes the eight hundred 
and ninth in the collection, as printed, of Walpole's 
part of the correspondence between them. 

But we must not suppose that Lady Ossory's gazetteer 
is all this time forgetful of his Countess. Here is an 
anecdote which he sends her in the early part of 1786 : 

" How do you like, Madam, the following story ? A 
young Madame de Choiseul is inloved with by Monsieur 
de Coigny and Prince Joseph of Monaco. She longed 
for a parrot that should be a miracle of eloquence : 
every other shop in Paris sells mackaws, parrots, 
cockatoos, &c. No wonder one at least of the rivals 
soon found a Mr. Pitt, and the bird was immediately 
declared the nymph's first minister : but as she had 



Story of Madame de Choiseul. 227 

two passions as well as two lovers, she was also en- 
amoured of General Jackoo at Astley's. The unsuc- 
cessful candidate offered Astley ingots for his monkey, 
but Astley demanding a terre for life, the paladin was 
forced to desist, but fortunately heard of another 
miracle of parts of the Monomotapan race, who was 
not in so exalted a sphere of life, being only a marmiton 
in a kitchen, where he had learnt to pluck fowls with 
an inimitable dexterity. This dear animal was not 
invaluable, was bought, and presented to Madame de 
Choiseul, who immediately made him the secretaire 
de ses commandemens. Her caresses were distributed 
equally to the animals, and her thanks to the donors. 
The first time she went out, the two former were locked 
up in her bed-chamber. Ah ! I dread to tell the 
sequel. When the lady returned and flew to her 
chamber, Jackoo the second received her with all the 
empressement possible — but where was Poll ? — found at 
last under the bed, shivering and cowering — and with- 
out a feather, as stark as any Christian. Poll's 
presenter concluded that his rival had given the monkey 
with that very view, challenged him, they fought, and 
both were wounded ; and an heroic adventure it was !" 

Mrs. Clive being dead, and another sister-in-loo, 
Lady Browne, whom he often called his better-half, 
having left Twickenham, Walpole, when at Strawberry 
Hill, began to look across the water for society. He 
was attracted to Richmond by George Selwyn, who 
was now at times domesticated there with the Duke of 

15—2 



228 Quecnsbcrry House. 

Queensberry, the " Old Q" of the caricaturists. In 
December, 1786, Horace writes : 

" I went yesterday to see the Duke of Queensberry's 
palace at Richmond, under the conduct of George 
Selwyn, the concierge. You cannot imagine how noble 
it looks now all the Cornbury pictures from Amesbury 
are hung up there. The great hall, the great gallery, 
the eating-room, and the corridor, are covered with 
whole and half-lengths of royal family, favourites, 
ministers, peers, and judges, of the reign of Charles I. 
— not one an original, I think, at least not one fine, 
yet altogether they look very respectable ; and the 
house is so handsome, and the views so rich, and the 
day was so fine, that I could only have been more 
pleased if (for half an hour) I could have seen the real 
palace that once stood on that spot, and the persons 
represented walking about ! — A visionary holiday in old 
age, though it has not the rapture of youth, is a sedate 
enjoyment that is more sensible because one attends to 
it and reflects upon it at the time ; and as new tumults 
do not succeed, the taste remains long in one's memory's 
mouth." 

Walpole was late this year in removing to Berkeley 
Square. The political topic of the London season was 
the debates in the House of Commons on the charges 
against Warren Hastings ; the social topic, in our 
author's circle at any rate, appears to have been some 
theatrical performances at the Duke of Richmond's 
house in Whitehall, Horace seems to have interested 



Warren Hastings. 729 

himself a good deal more in the latter subject than the 
former. Lady Ossory having urged him to read a 
pamphlet in favour of Mr. Hastings, he replies : 

" The pamphlet I have read, Madam ; but cannot 
tell you what would have been my opinion of it, 
because my opinion was influenced before I saw it. A 
lady-politician ordered me to read it, and to admire it, 
as the chef-d'oeuvre of truth, eloquence, wit, argument, 
and impartiality ; and she assured me that the reason- 
ings in it were unanswerable. I believe she meant the 
assertions, for I know she uses those words as synony- 
mous. I promised to obey her, as I am sure that ladies 
understand politics better than I do, and I hold it as a 
rule of faith — 

" That all that they admire is sweet, 
And all is sense that they repeat. 

" How much ready wit they have ! I can give you an 
instance, Madam, that I heard last night. After the 
late execution of the eighteen malefactors, a female was 
hawking an account of them, but called them nineteen. 
A gentleman said to her, ' Why do you say nineteen ? 
there were but eighteen hanged.' She replied, ' Sir, I 
did not know you had been reprieved.' " 

A week later, he writes again : 

"Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1787. 
" Though I sigh for your Ladyship's coming to town, 
I do not know whether I shall not be a loser, for what 



230 Warren Hastings. 

news don't you send me ? That Lord Salisbury is a 
poet is nothing to your intelligence that / am going to 
turn player ; nay, perhaps I should, if I were not too 
young for the company ! — You tell me, too, that I snub 
and sneer ; I protest, I thought I was the snubee. . . . 

" For sneering, Heaven help me ! I was guiltless. 
Every day I meet with red-hot politicians in petticoats, 
and told your Ladyship how I had been schooled by 
one of them, and how docile I was. If you yourself 
have any zeal for making converts, I should be very 
ready to be a proselyte, if I could get anything by it. 
It is very creditable, honourable, and fashionable ; but, 
alas ! I am so insignificant that I fear nobody would 
buy me ; and one should look sillily to put one's self up 
to sale and not find a purchaser. 

" In short, I doubt I shall never make my fortune by 
turning courtier or comedian ; and therefore I may as 
well adhere to my old principles, as I have always done, 
since you yourself, Madam, would not be flattered in a 
convert that nobody would take off your hands. If you 
could bring over Mr. Sheridan, he would do something : 
he talked for five hours and a half on Wednesday, and 
turned everybody's head. One heard everybody in the 
streets raving on the wonders of that speech ; for my 
part, I cannot believe it was so supernatural as they 
say — do you believe it was, Madam ? I will go to my 
oracle, who told me of the marvels of the pamphlet, 
which assures us that Mr. Hastings is a prodigy of 
virtue and abilities ; and, as you think so too, how 
should such a fellow as Sheridan, who has no diamonds 



Warren Hastings. 231 

to bestow, fascinate all the world ? — Yet witchcraft, no 
doubt, there has been, for when did simple eloquence 
ever convince a majority ? Mr. Pitt and 174 other 
persons found Mr. Hastings guilty last night,* and 
only sixty-eight remained thinking with the pamphlet 
and your Ladyship, that he is as white as snow. Well, 
at least there is a new crime, sorcery, to charge on the 
Opposition ! and, till they are cleared of that charge, I 
will never say a word in their favour, nor think on 
politics more, which I would not have mentioned but in 
answer to your Ladyship's questions ; and therefore 
I hope we shall drop the subject, and meet soon 
in Grosvenor Place in a perfect neutrality of good 
humour." 

His remarks on the Duke's Theatre are contained in 
the following letter, written after his early return to 
Twickenham. 

"Strawberry Hill, June 14, 1787. 

" Though your Ladyship gave me law (a very proper 
synonyme for delay), I should have answered your 
letter incontinently, but I have had what is called a 
blight in one of my eyes, and for some days was forced 
to lie fallow, neither reading nor writing a line ; which 
is a little uncomfortable when quite alone. I do begin 
to creep about my house, but have not recovered my 
feet enough to compass the whole circuit of my garden. 
Monday last was pleasant, and Tuesday very warm ; 

* That is, voted that the charge relating to the spoliation of the 
Begums of Oude contained matter for impeachment. 



232 Genteel Comedy. 

but we are relapsed into our east windhood, which has 
reigned ever since I have been here for this green winter, 
which, I presume, is the highest title due to this season, 
which in southern climes is positive summer, a name 
imported by our travellers, with grapes, peaches, and 
tuberoses. However, most of my senses have enjoyed 
themselves — my sight with verdure, my smell by millions 
of honeysuckles, my hearing by nightingales, and my 
feeling with good fires : tolerable luxury for an old 
cavalier in the north of Europe ! Semiramis of Russia 
is not of my taste, or she would not travel half round the 
arctic circle ; unless she means to conquer the Turks, 
and transfer the seat of her empire to Constantinople, 
like its founder. The ghost of Irene will be mighty 
glad to see her there, though a little surprised that the 
Grand Duke, her son, is still alive. I hear she has 
carried her grandchildren with her as hostages, or she 
might be dethroned, and not hear of it for three 
months. 

" I am very far from tired, Madam, of encomiums on 
the performance at Richmond House, but I, by no 
means, agree with the criticism on it that you quote, 
and which, I conclude, was written by some player, 
from envy. Who should act genteel comedy perfectly, 
but people of fashion that have sense ? Actors and 
actresses can only guess at the tone of high life, and 
cannot be inspired with it. Why are there so few 
genteel comedies, but because most comedies are 
written by men not of that sphere ? Etherege, Con- 
greve, Vanbrugh, and Cibber wrote genteel comedy, 



Genteel Comedy. 233 

because they lived in the best company; and Mrs. 
Oldfield played it so well, because she not only followed, 
but often set, the fashion. General Burgoyne has 
written the best modern comedy, for the same reason ; 
and Miss Farren* is as excellent as Mrs. Oldfield, 
because she has lived with the best style of men in 
England : whereas Mrs. Abington can never go beyond 
Lady Teazle, which is a second-rate character, and that 
rank of women are always aping women of fashion, 
without arriving at the style. Farquhar's plays talk 
the language of a marching regiment in country 
quarters : Wycherley, Dryden, Mrs. Centlivre, etc., 
wrote as if they had only lived in the ' Rose Tavern ;'t 
but then the Court lived in Drury Lane, too, and Lady 
Dorchester and Nell Gwyn were equally good company. 
The Richmond Theatre, I imagine, will take root. I 
supped with the Duke at Mrs. Darner's, the night 
before I left London, and they were talking of im- 
provements on the local, as the French would say." 

A few weeks later, he has dismissed the talk of 
London, and is occupied with his neighbours on the 
Thames. The following is a letter to Lord Strafford : 

" Strawberry Hill, July 28, 1787. 

" Saint Swithin is no friend to correspondence, my 
dear Lord. There is not only a great sameness in his 
own proceedings, but he makes everybody else dull — I 

* Miss Elizabeth Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby. 
j A celebrated tavern adjoining Drury Lane Theatre. 



234 St Swithin. 

mean in the country, where one frets at its raining 
every day and all day. In town he is no more minded 
than the proclamation against vice and immorality. 
Still, though he has all the honours of the quarantine, I 
believed it often rained for forty days long before St. 
Swithin was born, if ever born he was ; and the proverb 
was coined and put under his patronage, because people 
observed that it frequently does rain for forty days 
together at this season. I remember Lady Suffolk 
telling me, that Lord Dysart's great meadow at Ham had 
never been mowed but once in forty years without rain. 
I said, ' All that that proved was, that rain was good 
for hay,' as I am persuaded the climate of a country 
and its productions are suited to each other. Nay, 
rain is good for haymakers too, who get more employ- 
ment the oftener the hay is made over again. I do not 
know who is the saint that presides over thunder ; but 
he has made an unusual quantity in this chill summer, 
and done a great deal of serious mischief, though not a 
fiftieth part of what Lord George Gordon did seven 
years ago, and happily he is fled. 

" Our little part of the world has been quiet as usual. 
The Duke of Queensberry has given a sumptuous dinner 
to the Princesse de Lamballe — et voila tout. I never 
saw her, not even in France. I have no particular 
penchant for sterling princes and princesses, much less 
for those of French plate. 

" The only entertaining thing I can tell your Lord- 
ship from our district is, that old Madam French, who 
lives close by the bridge at Hampton Court, where, 



Riverside Conceits. 235 

between her and the Thames, she has nothing but one 
grass-plot of the width of her house, has paved that 
whole plot with black and white marble in diamonds, 
exactly like the floor of a church ; and this curious 
metamorphosis of a garden into a pavement has cost 
her three hundred and forty pounds : — a tarpaulin she 
might have had for some shillings, which would have 
looked as well, and might easily have been removed. 
To be sure, this exploit, and Lord Dudley's obelisk 
below a hedge, with his canal at right angles with the 
Thames, and a sham bridge no broader than that of a 
violin, and parallel to the river, are not preferable to the 
monsters in dipt yews of our ancestors. On the con- 
trary, Mrs. Walsingham is making her house at Ditton 
(now baptized Boyle Farm*) very orthodox. Her 
daughter Miss Boyle, who has real genius, has carved 
three tablets in marble with boys, designed by herself. 
Those sculptures are for a chimney-piece ; and she is 
painting panels in grotesque for the library, with 
pilasters of glass in black and gold. Miss Crewe, who 
has taste too, has decorated a room for her mother's 
house at Richmond, which was Lady Margaret Comp- 
ton's, in a very pretty manner. How much more 
amiable the old women of the next age will be, than 
most of those we remember, who used to tumble at 
once from gallantry to devout scandal and cards, and 
revenge on the young of their own sex the desertion of 
ours ! Now they are ingenious, they will not want 
amusement." 

* Recently the seat of Lord St. Leonards. 



236 Lord North. 

In the autumn, he pays a visit to Lord North : 

" I dined last Monday at Bushy (for you know 1 
have more penchant for Ministers that are out than 
when they are in) and never saw a more interesting 
scene. Lord North's spirits, good humour, wit, sense, 
drollery, are as perfect as ever — the unremitting atten- 
tion of Lady North and his children, most touching. 
Mr. North leads him about, Miss North sits constantly 
by him, carves meat, watches his every motion, scarce 
puts a bit into her own lips ; and if one cannot help 
commending her, she colours with modesty and sorrow 
till the tears gush into her eyes. If ever loss of sight 
could be compensated, it is by so affectionate a family." 

Not long after this, Walpole repeats a good-humoured 
jest of the blind old man on receiving a call from his 
quondam opponent, Colonel Barr6, whose sight also 
was nearly gone. Lord North said : " Colonel Barre, 
nobody will suspect us of insincerity, if we say that we 
should always be overjoyed to see each other." 

With the return of winter, the theatre comes up 
again. There was a stage at Ampthill as well as at 
Whitehall : 

"Berkeley Square, Jan. 15, 1788. 

" All joy to your Ladyship on the success of your 
theatric campaign. I do think the representation of 
plays as entertaining and ingenious, as choosing king 
and queen, and the gambols and mummeries of our 
ancestors at Christmas ; or as making one's neighbours 



The Theatre Again. 237 

and all their servants drunk, and sending them home 
ten miles in the dark with the chance of breaking their 
necks by some comical overturn. I wish I could have 
been one of the audience ; but, alas ! I am like the 
African lamb, and can only feed on the grass and herbs 
that grow within my reach. 

" I can make no returns yet from the theatre at 
Richmond House ; the Duke and Duchess do not come 
till the birthday, and I have been at no more rehearsals, 
being satisfied with two of the play. Prologue or 
epilogue there is to be none, as neither the plays nor 
the performers, in general, are new. The ' Jealous 
Wife ' is to succeed for the exhibition of Mrs. Hobart, 
who could have no part in ' The Wonder.' 

" My histrionic acquaintance spreads. I supped at 
Lady Dorothy Hotham's with Mrs. Siddons, and have 
visited and been visited by her, and have seen and 
liked her much, yes, very much, in the passionate 
scenes of ' Percy ;' but I do not admire her in cool 
declamation, and find her voice very hollow and de- 
fective. I asked her in which part she would most wish 
me to see her ? She named Portia in the ' Merchant of 
Venice ;' but I begged to be excused. With all my 
enthusiasm for Shakespeare, it is one of his plays that 
I like the least. The story of the caskets is silly, and, 
except the character of Shylock, I see nothing beyond 
the attainment of a mortal : Euripides, or Racine, or 
Voltaire, might have written all the rest. Moreover, 
Mrs. Siddons's warmest devotees do not hold her above 
a demigoddess in comedy. I have chosen ' Athenais,' 



238 Gibbons History. 

in which she is to appear soon ; her scorn is ad- 
mirable 

" Puppet-shows are coming on, the birth-day, the Par- 
liament, and the trial of Hastings and his imp, Elijah. 
They will fill the town, I suppose." 

Walpole was as severe on professional authors as on 
professional actors. " Except," he says, " for such a 
predominant genius as Shakespeare and Milton, I hold 
authors cheap enough : what merit is there in pains, 
and study, and application, compared with the extem- 
pore abilities of such men as Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, 
or Mr. Pitt ?" But he made a further exception in 
favour of Gibbon. The following extract, besides an 
estimate of Gibbon's . History, contains a reference to 
the celebrated Begum Speech delivered by Sheridan 
in Westminster Hall on the trial of Warren Hastings : 

" I finished Mr. Gibbon a full fortnight ago, and was 
extremely pleased. It is a most wonderful mass of 
information, not only on history, but almost on all the 
ingredients of history, as war, government, commerce, 
coin, and what not. If it has a fault, it is in embracing 
too much, and consequently in not detailing enough, 
and in striding backwards and forwards from one set of 
princes to another, and from one subject to another; so 
that, without much historic knowledge, and without 
much memory, and much method in one's memory, it 
is almost impossible not to be sometimes bewildered : 
nay, his own impatience to tell what he knows, makes 
the author, though commonly so explicit, not perfectly 



Sheridan. 239 

clear in his expressions. The last chapter of the fourth 
volume, I own, made me recoil, and I could scarcely 
push through it. So far from being Catholic or heretic, 
I wished Mr. Gibbon had never heard of Monophysites, 
Nestorians, or any such fools ! But the sixth volume 
made ample amends ; Mahomet and the Popes were 
gentlemen and good company. I abominate fractions 
of theology and reformation. 

" Mr. Sheridan, I hear, did not quite satisfy the 
passionate expectation that had been raised ; but it was 
impossible he could, when people had worked them- 
selves into an enthusiasm of offering fifty — ay, fifty 
guineas for a ticket to hear him. Well, we are sunk 
and deplorable in many points, yet not absolutely gone, 
when history and eloquence throw out such shoots ! I 
thought I had outlived my country ; I am glad not to 
leave it desperate !" 

The next letter contains further references to the 
Begum Speech. It is addressed to Lord Strafford, 
and is one of the latest of Walpole's letters to that 
nobleman which have been preserved : 

" Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, June 17, 1788. 
" I guess, my dear Lord, and only guess, that you 
are arrived at Wentworth Castle. If you are not, my 
letter will lose none of its bloom by waiting for you ; 
for I have nothing fresh to tell you, and only write 
because you enjoined it. I settled in my Liliputian 
towers but this morning. I wish people would come 
into the country on May-day, and fix in town the first 



240 Conway s Comedy. 

of November. But as they will not, I have made up 
my mind ; and having so little time left, I prefer 
London, when my friends and society are in it, to 
living here alone, or with the weird sisters of Richmond 
and Hampton. I had additional reason now, for the 
streets are as green as the fields : we are burnt to the 
bone, and have not a lock of hay to cover our naked- 
ness : oats are so dear, that I suppose they will soon be 
eaten at Brooks's and fashionable tables as a rarity. 
Though not resident till now, I have flitted backwards 
and forwards, and last Friday came hither to look for 
a minute at a ball at Mrs. Walsingham's at Ditton ; 
which would have been very pretty, for she had stuck 
coloured lamps in the hair of all her trees and bushes, 
if the east wind had not danced a reel all the time 
by the side of the river. 

" Mr. Conway's play,* of which your Lordship has seen 
some account in the papers, has succeeded delightfully, 
both in representation and applause. The language is 
most genteel, though translated from verse ; and both 
prologue and epilogue are charming. The former was 
delivered most justly and admirably by Lord Derby, 
and the latter with inimitable spirit and grace by Mrs. 
Darner. Mr. Merry and Mrs. Bruce played excellently 
too. But General Conway, Mrs. Darner, and every- 
body else are drowned by Mr. Sheridan, whose renown 
has engrossed all Fame's tongues and trumpets. Lord 

* A comedy called " False Appearances," translated from 
"L'Homme du Jour" of Boissy. It was first acted at the private 
theatre at Richmond House, and afterwards at Drury Lane. 



A Turkish War.. 241 

Townshend said he should be sorry were he forced to 
give a vote directly on Hastings, before he had time to 
cool ; and one of the Peers saying the speech had not 
made the same impression on him, the Marquis replied, 
A seal might be finely cut, and yet not be in fault for 
making a bad impression. 

"I have, you see, been forced to send your Lordship 
what scraps I brought from town. The next four 
months, I doubt, will reduce me to my old sterility ; 
for I cannot retail French Gazettes, though as a good 
Englishman bound to hope they will contain a civil 
war. I care still less about the double imperial cam- 
paign, only hoping that the poor dear Turks will 
heartily beat both Emperor and Empress. If the first 
Ottomans could be punished, they deserve it, but the 
present possessors have as good a prescription on their 
side as any people in Europe. We ourselves are 
Saxons, Danes, Normans ; our neighbours are Franks, 
not Gauls ; who the rest are, Goths, Gepidse, Heruli, 
Mr. Gibbon knows ; and the Dutch usurped the estates 
of herrings, turbots, and other marine indigenae. Still, 
though I do not wish the hair of a Turk's beard to be 
hurt, I do not say that it would not be amusing to 
have Constantinople taken, merely as a lusty event; 
for neither could I live to see Athens revive, nor have I 
much faith in two such bloody-minded vultures, cock 
and hen, as Catherine and Joseph, conquering for the 
benefit of humanity ; nor does my Christianity admire 
the propagation of the Gospel by the mouth of cannon. 
What desolation of peasants and their families by the 

16 



242 A Turkish War. 

episodes of forage and quarters ! Oh ! I wish Catherine 
and Joseph were brought to Westminster Hall and 
worried by Sheridan ! I hope, too, that the poor 
Begums are alive to hear of his speech : it will be some 
comfort, though I doubt nobody thinks of restoring 
them a quarter of a lac !" 

We must now find place for a letter to Miss More : 

" Strawberry Hill, July 4, 1788. 

" I am soundly rejoiced, my dear Madam, that the 
present summer is more favourable to me than the 
last ; and that, instead of not answering my letters in 
three months, you open the campaign first. May not 
I flatter myself that it is a symptom of your being in 
better health ? I wish, however, you had told me so 
in positive words, and that all your complaints have 
left you. Welcome as is your letter, it would have 
been ten times more welcome bringing me that assur- 
ance ; for don't think I forget how ill you was last 
winter. As letters, you say, now keep their coaches, I 
hope those from Bristol will call often at my door.* I 
promise you I will never be denied to them. 

" No botanist am I ; nor wished to learn from you, of 

* Meaning the establishment of the Mail-coach. Miss More, 
in her last letter, had said, — " Mail-coaches, which come to 
others, come not to me : letters and newspapers, now that they 
travel in coaches, like gentlemen and ladies, come not within ten 
miles of my hermitage ; and while other fortunate provincials are 
studying the world and its ways, and are feasting upon elopements, 
divorces, and suicides, tricked out in all the elegancies of Mr. Top- 
ham's phraseology, I am obliged to be contented with village vices, 
petty iniquities, and vulgar sins." — Memoirs, vol. ii„ p. 77. 



Society Newspapers. 243 

all the Muses, that piping has a new signification. 1 
had rather that you handled an oaten pipe than a car- 
nation one ; yet setting layers, I own, is preferable to 
reading newspapers, one of the chronical maladies of 
this age. Everybody reads them, nay, quotes them, 
though everybody knows they are stuffed with lies or 
blunders. How should it be otherwise ? If any extra- 
ordinary event happens, who but must hear it before it 
descends through a coffee-house to the runner of a 
daily paper ? They who are always wanting news, are 
wanting to hear they don't know what. A lower 
species, indeed, is that of the scribes you mention, who 
every night compose a journal for the satisfaction of 
such illiterati, and feed them with all the vices and 
misfortunes of every private family ; nay, they now call it 
a duty to publish all those calamities which decency to 
wretched relations used in compassion to suppress, I 
mean self-murder in particular. Mr. Hesse's was 
detailed at length ; and to-day that of Lord Saye and 
Sele. The pretence is, in tcrrorem, like the absurd 
stake and highway of our ancestors ; as if there were a 
precautionary potion for madness, or the stigma of a 
newspaper were more dreadful than death. Daily 
journalists, to be sure, are most respectable magis- 
trates ! Yes, much like the cobblers that Cromwell 
made peers. 

" I do lament your not going to Mr. Conway's play : 
both the author and actors deserved such an auditor as 
you, and you deserved to hear them. However, I do 
not pity good people who out of virtue lose or miss any 

16 — 2 



244 Society Newspapers. 

pleasures. Those pastimes fleet as fast as those of the 
wicked ; but, when gone, you saints can sit down and 
feast on your self-denial, and drink bumpers of satisfac- 
tion to the health of your own merit. So truly I don't 
pity you. 

" You say you hear no news, yet you quote Mr. 
Topham ;* therefore why should I tell you that the 
King is going to Cheltenham ? or that the Baccelli 
lately danced at the Opera at Paris with a blue ban- 
deau on her forehead, inscribed, Honi soit qui mal y 
pense / 

" Well ! would we committed nothing but follies ! 
What do we not commit when the abolition of slavery 
hitches 1 Adieu ! 

" Though Cato died, though Tully spoke, 
Tnough Brutus dealt the godlike stroke, 
Yet perish'd fated Rome. 

" You have written ; and I fear that even, if Mr. 
Sheridan speaks, trade, the modern religion, will pre- 
dominate. Adieu !" 

Our next extract contains an account of an incident 
which proved more fortunate for the writer than any- 
thing that happened to him during the remainder of 

* Major Topham was the proprietor of the fashionable morning 
paper entitled The World. " In this paper," says Mr. Gifford, in 
his preface to the " Baviad," " were given the earliest specimens of 
those unqualified and audacious attacks on all private character, 
which the town first smiled at for their quaintness, then tolerated 
for their absurdity ; and — now that other papers equally wicked 
and more intelligible have ventured to imitate it — will have to 
lament to the last hour of British liberty." 



The Misses Berry. 245 

his life. It is from a letter to Lady Ossory, dated 
Strawberry Hill, October n, 1788. Horace writes : 

" I am sorry, for the third time of this letter, that I 
have no new village anecdotes to send your Ladyship, 
since they divert you for a moment. I have one, but 
some months old. Lady Charleville, my neighbour, 
told me three months ago, that, having some company 
with her, one of them had been to see Strawberry. 
' Pray,' said another, ' who is that Mr. Walpole ?' 
1 Who !' cried a third, ' don't you know the great 
epicure, Mr. Walpole?' 'Pho!' said the first, 'great 
epicure ! you mean the antiquarian.' There, Madam, 
surely this anecdote may take its place in the chapter 
of local fame. If I have picked up no recent anecdotes 
on our Common, I have made a much more, to me, 
precious acquisition. It is the acquaintance of two 
young ladies of the name of Berry, whom I first saw 
last winter, and who accidentally took a house here 
with their father for the season. Their story is singular 
enough to entertain you. The grandfather,* a Scot, had 
a large estate in his own country, £5,000 a year it is 
said ; and a circumstance I shall tell you makes it pro- 
bable. The oldest son married for love a woman with 
no fortune. The old man was enraged, and would net 
see him. His wife died and left these two young ladies. 
The grandfather wished for an heir male and pressed 
the widower to remarry, but could not prevail ; the son 
declaring he would consecrate himself to his daughters 

* Walpole was mistaken here. It was their granduncle, not 
their grandfather, from whom Mr. Berry had expected to inherit. 



246 The Misses Berry. 

and their education. The old man did not break with 
him again, but, much worse, totally disinherited him, 
and left all to his second son, who very handsomely 
gave up £800 a year to his elder brother. Mr. Berry 
has since carried his daughters for two or three years 
to France and Italy, and they are returned the best- 
informed and the most perfect creatures I ever saw at 
their age. They are exceedingly sensible, entirely 
natural and unaffected, frank, and, being qualified to 
talk on any subject, nothing is so easy and agreeable as 
their conversation, nor more apposite than their an- 
swers and observations. The eldest, I discovered by 
chance, understands Latin and is a perfect French- 
woman in her language. The younger draws charm- 
ingly, and has copied admirably Lady Di's gipsies, 
which I lent, though for the first time of her 
attempting colours. They are of pleasing figures. 
Mary, the eldest, sweet, with fine dark eyes, that are 
very lively when she speaks, with a symmetry of face 
that is the more interesting from being pale; Agnes, 
the younger, has an agreeable sensible countenance, 
hardly to be called handsome, but almost. She is less 
animated than Mary, but seems, out of deference to her 
sister, to speak seldomer, for they dote on each other, 
and Mary is always praising her sister's talents. I 
must even tell you they dress within the bounds of 
fashion, though fashionably ; but without the excres- 
cences and balconies with which modern hoydens over- 
whelm and barricade their persons. In short, good 
sense, information, simplicity, and ease characterise 



The Misses Berry. 247 

the Bcrrys ; and this is not particularly mine, who am 
apt to be prejudiced, but the universal voice of all who 
know them. The first night I met them I would not 
be acquainted with them, having heard so much in 
their praise that I concluded they would be all preten- 
sion. The second time, in a very small company, I 
sat next to Mary, and found her an angel both inside 
and out. Now, I do not know which I like best ; except 
Mary's face, which is formed for a sentimental novel, 
but it is ten times fitter for a fifty times better thing, 
genteel comedy. This delightful family comes to me 
almost every Sunday evening, as our region is too 
proclamatory to play at cards on the seventh day. I 
forgot to tell you that Mr. Berry is a little merry man, 
with a round face, and you would not suspect him of so 
much feeling and attachment. I make no excuse for 
such minute details ; for, if your Ladyship insists on 
hearing the humours of my district, you must for once 
indulge me with sending you two pearls that I found in 
my path." 

At the date ot the above extract, Mary Berry was in 
her twenty-sixth year, Agnes Berry in her twenty-fifth. 
The notice taken by Walpole of these ladies gave them 
a position in the best London society, which they en- 
joyed for upwards of sixty years ; but this patronage, 
and any other benefits which he bestowed upon them, 
were much more than repaid by the grateful attention 
with which they sacrificed themselves to promote the 
comfort of his last years. The new acquaintance ad- 



248 The Misses Berry. 

vanced rapidly. Here is one of the earliest of Walpole's 
letters to the sisters which has been published. Like 
many others of the series, it is addressed to the two 
jointly. 

"February 2, 17 — 71* [1789]. 

" I am sorry, in the sense of that word before it 
meant, like a Hebrew word, glad or sorry, that I am 
engaged this evening ; and I am at your command on 
Tuesday, as it is always my inclination to be. It is a 
misfortune that words are become so much the current 
coin of society, that, like King William's shillings, they 
have no impression left ; they are so smooth, that they 
mark no more to whom they first belonged than to 
whom they do belong, and are not worth even the 
twelvepence into which they may be changed : but if 
they mean too little, they may seem to mean too much 
too, especially when an old man (who is often synony- 
mous for a miser) parts with them. I am afraid of 
protesting how much I delight in your society, lest I 
should seem to affect being gallant ; but if two nega- 
tives make an affirmative, why may not two ridicules 
compose one piece of sense ? and therefore, as I am in 
love with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good 
sense of your devoted H. Walpole." 

A few months later we have the following letter to 
Miss More : 

* The date is thus put, alluding to his age, which, in 1789. was 
seventy-one.— Mary Bekry. 



Bonner s Ghost. 249 

"Strawberry Hill, June 23, 17S9. 

" Madam Hannah, 

" You are an errant reprobate, and grow wickeder 
and wickeder every day. You deserve to be treated 
like a negre ; and your favourite Sunday, to which you 
are so partial, that you treat the other poor six days of the 
week as if they had no souls to be saved, should, if I 
could have my will, ' shine no Sabbath-day for you.' 
Now, don't simper, and look as innocent as if virtue 
would not melt in your mouth. Can you deny the 
following charges ? — I lent you the ' Botanic Garden,' 
and you returned it without writing a syllable, or saying 
where you were, or whither you was going ; I suppose 
for fear I should know how to direct to you. Why, if I 
did send a letter after you, could not you keep it three 
months without an answer, as you did last year ? 

" In the next place, you and your nine accomplices, 
who, by the way, are too good in keeping you company, 
have clubbed the prettiest Poem imaginable,* and com- 
municated it to Mrs. Boscawen, with injunctions not to 
give a copy of it ; I suppose because you are ashamed 
of having written a panegyric. Whenever you do 
compose a satire, you are ready enough to publish it ; 
at least, whenever you do, you will din one to death 
with it. But now, mind your perverseness : that very 
pretty novel poem, and I must own it is charming, have 
you gone and spoiled, flying in the faces of your best 
friends the Muses, and keeping no measures with them. 

" Bishop Bonner's Ghost. 



250 Bonner s Ghost. 

I'll be shot if they dictated two of the best lines with 
two syllables too much in each — nay, you have weak- 
ened one of them, 

" ' Ev'n Gardiner's mind ' 

is far more expressive than steadfast Gardiner's ; and, 
as Mrs. Boscawen says, whoever knows anything of 
Gardiner, could not want that superfluous epithet ; and 
whoever does not, would not be the wiser for your foolish 
insertion — Mrs. Boscawen did not call it foolish, but I 
do. The second line, as Mesdemoiselles the Muses 
handed it to you, Miss, was, 

" ' Have all be free and saved — ' 

not, ' All be free and all be saved :' the second all be is a 
most unnecessary tautology. The poem was perfect 
and faultless, if you could have let it alone. I wonder 
how your mischievous flippancy could help maiming 
that most new and beautiful expression, ' sponge of 
sins ;' I should not have been surprised, as you love 
verses too full of feet, if you had changed it to ' that 
scrubbing-brush of sins.' 

" Well ! I will say no more now : but if you do not 
order me a copy of ' Bonner's Ghost ' incontinently, 
never dare to look my printing-house in the face again. 
Or come, I'll tell you what ; I will forgive all your 
enormities if you will let me print your poem. I like 
to filch a little immortality out of others, and the Straw- 
berry press could never have a better opportunity. I 
will not haggle for the public ; I will be content with 



Bonner s Ghost. 2 5 1 

printing only two hundred copies, of which you shall 
have half and I half. It shall cost you nothing but a 
yes. I only propose this in case you do not mean to 
print it yourself. Tell me sincerely which you like. 
But as to not printing it at all, charming and unexcep- 
tionable as it is, you cannot be so preposterous. 

"I by no means have a thought of detracting from 
your own share in your own poem ; but, as I do suspect 
that it caught some inspiration from your perusal of 
' The Botanic Garden,' so I hope you will discover that 
my style is much improved by having lately studied 
' Bruce's Travels.' There I dipped, and not in St. 
Giles's Pound, where one would think this author had 
been educated. Adieu ! Your friend, or mortal foe, as 
you behave on the present occasion." 

Before the date of the last, the Misses Berry had set 
out on a summer excursion. The following is in answer 
to a letter from the elder : 

" Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1789. 
"Were there any such thing as sympathy at the 
distance of two hundred miles, you would have been in 
a mightier panic than I was; for, on Saturday se'nnight, 
going to open the glass case in the Tribune, my foot 
caught in the carpet, and I fell with my whole weight 
(si weight y a) against the corner of the marble altar 
on my side, and bruised the muscles so badly, that for 
two days I could not move without screaming. I am 
convinced I should have broken a rib, but that I fell on 
the cavity whence two of my ribs were removed that 



252 The Arabian Nights. 

are gone to Yorkshire. I am much better both of my 
bruise and of my lameness, and shall be ready to dance 
at my own wedding when my wives return. And now 
to answer your letter. 

" If you grow tired of the ' Arabian Nights,' you 
have no more taste than Bishop Atterbury, who huffed 
Pope for sending him them (or the 'Persian Tales'), 
and fancied he liked Virgil better, who had no more 
imagination than Dr. Akenside. Read ' Sinbad the 
Sailor's Voyages,' and you will be sick of JEneas's. 
What woful invention were the nasty poultry that 
spoiled his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids ! 
A barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime 
is full as sublime an effort of genius. I do not know 
whether the 'Arabian Nights ' are of Oriental origin or 
not : I should think not, because I never saw any other 
Oriental composition that was not bombast without 
genius, and figurative without nature ; like an Indian 
screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and 
larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they 
take for perspective. I do not think the Sultaness's 
narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a 
wildness in them that captivates. However, if you 
could wade through two octavos* of Dame Piozzi's 
thoughts and so's and I trow's, and cannot listen to seven 
volumes of Scheherezade's narrations, I will sue for a 

* Her "Observations and Reflections made in the course of a 
Journey through France, Italy, and Germany," honoured with 
a couplet in the " Baviad " — 

" See Thrale's grey widow with a satchel roam, 
And bring in pomp laborious nothings home." 



King's College Chapel. 253 

divorce in foro Pamassi, and Boccalini shall be my 
proctor. The cause will be a counterpart to the sentence 
of the Lacedaemonian, who was condemned for breach 
of the peace, by saying in three words what he might 
have said in two. 

" So, you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to 
have been transported, with King's College Chapel, 
because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral. 
I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, 
because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trail, 
and does not rest on earth. Criticism and comparison 
spoil many tastes. You should admire all bold and 
unique essays that resemble nothing else ; the ' Botanic 
Garden,' the ' Arabian Nights,' and King's Chapel are 
above all rules : and how preferable is what no one can 
imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best 
models ! Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I 
do approve, and I doubt whether the world would not be 
a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction 
of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and 
the proscription of the heathen deities. Reason has 
no invention ; and as plain sense will never be the 
legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste 
happens to be regent." 

During the absence of his young favourites, he amuses 
himself with visiting his neighbours, and grumbling at 
his " customers," as he called the strangers who came 
to view his villa and grounds : 

" Richmond is in the first request this summer. 



254 Richmond Society. 

Mrs. Bouverie is settled there with a large court. The 
Sheridans are there, too, and the Bunburys. I have 
been once with the first ; with the others I am not 
acquainted. I go cnce or twice a week to George 
Selwyn late in the evening, when he comes in from 
walking : — about as often to Mrs. Ellis here, and to 
Lady Cecilia Johnston at Hampton ; but all together 
cannot contribute to an entertaining letter, and it is odd 
to say that, though my house is all the morning full of 
company, nobody lives so much alone. I have already 
this season had between seventy and fourscore com- 
panies to see my house ; and half my time passes in 
writing tickets or excuses. I wish I could think as an 
old sexton did at King's College. One of the fellows 
told him he must get a great deal of money by showing 
it : ' Oh, no ! master,' replied he ; ' everybody has seen 
it now.' My companies, it seems, are more prolific, and 
every set begets one or two more." 

About the same date, he writes to Mary and Agnes : 

"Strawberry Hill, Thursday evening, Aug. 27, 1789. 

" I jumped for joy ; that is, my heart did, which is 
all the remains of me that is in statu jumpante, at the 
receipt of your letter this morning, which tells me you 
approve of the house at Teddington. How kind you 
was to answer so incontinently ! I believe you bor- 
rowed the best steed from the races. I have sent to 
the landlord to come to me to-morrow : but I could 



Teddingion. 255 

not resist beginning my letter to-night, as I am at home 
alone, with a little pain in my left wrist ; but the right 
one has no brotherly feeling for it, and would not be 
put off so. You ask how you have deserved such 
attentions ? Why, by deserving them ; by every kind 
of merit, and by that superlative one to me, your sub- 
mitting to throw away so much time on a forlorn 
antique ; you two, who, without specifying particulars, 
(and you must at least be conscious that you are not 
two frights) might expect any fortune and distinctions, 
and do delight all companies. On which side lies the 
wonder ? Ask me no more such questions, or I will 
cram you with reasons. . . . 

Friday. 
" Well ! I have seen him, and nobody was ever so 
accommodating ! He is as courteous as a candidate 
for a county. You may stay in his house till Christmas 
if you please, and shall pay but twenty pounds ; and if 
more furniture is wanting, it shall be supplied." 

" Don't bring me a pair of scissors from Sheffield. I 
am determined nothing shall cut our loves, though I 
should live out the rest of Methusalem's term, as you 
kindly wish, and as I can believe, though you are my 
wives ; for I am persuaded my Agnes wishes so too. — 
Don't you ?" 

The French Revolution was now in full progress : 
the Bastile had been stormed and demolished ; anarchy 



256 New Arrivals. 

reigned in Paris ; chateaux in the provinces were being 
plundered and burnt by the peasants ; refugees, in terri- 
fied crowds, were pouring over to England. Some of 
the exiles presently found their way into Walpole's 
neighbourhood. " Madame de Boufflers," he tells Lady 
Ossory, " and the Comtesse Emilie, her daughter-in- 
law, I hear, are come to London ; and Woronzow, the 
Russian Minister, who has a house at Richmond, is to 
lend it to her for the winter, as her fortune has received 
some considerable blow in the present commotions." 
Besides these foreigners, other important personages 
had come or were coming into the district. The Duke 
of Clarence had a house in the middle of Richmond 
" with nothing but a green short apron to the river, a 
situation only fit for an old gentlewoman who has put 
out her knee-pans and loves cards. The Prince of 
Wales has taken a somewhat better place at Roe- 
hampton, and enters upon it at Christmas." " My 
Straw-Berries," he adds, " are not yet returned, but I 
expect them next week, and have found a house for 
them at Teddington very near me." A little later, he 
writes, " My neighbour, the Duke of Clarence, is so 
popular, that if Richmond were a borough, and he had 
not attained his title, but still retained his idea of 
standing candidate, he would certainly be elected there. 
He pays his bills regularly himself, locks up his doors 
at night, that his servants may not stay out late, and 
never drinks but a few glasses of wine. Though the 
value of crowns is mightily fallen of late at market, it 
looks as if his Royal Highness thought they were still 



The Berry s Visit Italy. 257 

worth waiting for ; nay, it is said that he tells his 
brothers that he shall be king before either — that is 
fair at least."* 

In July, 1790, Walpole is alarmed by the intelligence 
that the Berrys have arranged to make a long visit to 
Italy. He writes to Miss Berry, then at the sea with 
her sister : 

" I feel all the kindness of your determination of 
coming to Twickenham in August, and shall certainly 
say no more against it, though I am certain that I 
shall count every day that passes ; and when they are 
passed, they will leave a melancholy impression on Straw- 
berry, that I had rather have affixed to London. The 
two last summers were infinitely the pleasantest I ever 
passed here, for I never before had an agreeable 
neighbourhood. Still I loved the place, and had no 
comparisons to draw. Now, the neighbourhood will 
remain, and will appear ten times worse ; with the 
aggravation of remembering two months that may have 
some transient roses, but, I am sure, lasting thorns. 
You tell me I do not write with my usual spirits : at 
least I will suppress, as much as I can, the want of 
them, though I am a bad dissembler." 

The months pass, and we have the following farewell 
letter : 

* One half the prediction was fulfilled, since the Duke of 
Clarence outlived the Duke of York, and came to the throne in 
1830, on the death of his eldest brother, at this time, 1789, the 
Prince of Wales. 

*7 



258 Farewell Letter. 



" Sunday, Oct. 10, 1790. The day of your departure. 

" Is it possible to write to my beloved friends, and 
refrain from speaking of my grief for losing you ; though 
it is but the continuation of what I have felt ever 
since I was stunned by your intention of going abroad 
this autumn ? Still I will not tire you with it often. 
In happy days I smiled, and called you my dear 
wives : now I can only think on you as darling chil- 
dren of whom I am bereaved ! As such I have loved 
and do love you ; and, charming as you both are, I 
have had no occasion to remind myself that I am past 
seventy-three. Your hearts, your understandings, 
your virtues, and the cruel injustice of your fate,* 
have interested me in everything that concerns you ; 
and so far from having occasion to blush for any 
unbecoming weakness, I am proud of my affection for 
you, and very proud of your condescending to pass so 
many hours with a very old man, when everybody 
admires you, and the most insensible allow that your 
good sense and information (I speak of both) have 
formed you to converse with the most intelligent of our 
sex as well as your own ; and neither can tax you with 
airs of pretension or affectation. Your simplicity and 
natural ease set off all your other merits — all these 

* This alludes to Miss Berry's father having been disinherited by 
an uncle, to whom he was heir-at-law, and a large property left to 
his younger brother.— Mary Berry. 



Farewell Letter. 259 

graces are lost to me, alas ! when I have no time to 
lose. 

" Sensible as I am to my loss, it will occupy but part 
of my thoughts, till I know you safely landed, and 
arrived safely at Turin. Not till you are there, and I 
learn so, will my anxiety subside and settle into steady, 
selfish sorrow. I looked at every weathercock as I 
came along the road to-day, and was happy to see 
everyone point north-east. May they do so to- 
morrow ! 

" I found here the frame for Wolsey,* and to-morrow 
morning Kirgatet will place him in it ; and then I shall 
begin pulling the little parlour to pieces, that it may be 
hung anew to receive him. I have also obeyed Miss 
Agnes, though with regret ; for, on trying it, I found 
her Arcadia would fit the place of the picture she con- 
demned, which shall therefore be hung in its room ; 
though the latter should give way to nothing else, nor 
shall be laid aside, but shall hang where I shall see it 
almost as often. I long to hear that its dear paintress 
is well ; I thought her not at all so last night. You 
will tell me the truth, though she in her own 
case, and in that alone, allows herself mental reserva- 
tion. 

" Forgive me 'for writing nothing to-night but about 
you two and myself. Of what can I have thought else ? 
I have not spoken to a single person but my own 

* A drawing by Miss Agnes Berry, 
f His secretary. 

17— V 



260 Farewell Letter. 

servants since we parted last night. I found a message 
here from Miss Howe* to invite me for this evening. 
Do you think I have not preferred staying at home to 
write to you, as this must go to London to-morrow 
morning by the coach to be ready for Tuesday's post ? 
My future letters shall talk of other things, whenever I 
know anything worth repeating ; or perhaps any trifle, 
for I am determined to forbid myself lamentations that 
would weary you ; and the frequency of my letters will 
prove there is no forgetfulness. If I live to see you 
again, you will then judge whether I am changed ; but 
a friendship so rational and so pure as mine is, and so 
equal for both, is not likely to have any of the fickleness 
of youth, when it has none of its other ingredients. It 
was a sweet consolation to the short time that I may 
have left, to fall into such a society ; no wonder then 
that I am unhappy at that consolation being abridged. 
I pique myself on no philosophy, but what a long use 
and knowledge of the world had given me — the philo- 
sophy of indifference to most persons and events. I do 
pique myself on not being ridiculous at this very late 
period of my life ; but when there is not a grain of 
passion in my affection for you two, and when you both 
have the good sense not to be displeased at my telling 
you so, (though I hope you would have despised me for 
the contrary,) I am not ashamed to say that your loss is 
heavy to me ; and that I am only reconciled to it by 
hoping that a winter in Italy, and the journeys and sea 

* An unmarried sister of the first Earl Howe, who then lived 
at Richmond. 



Farewell Letter. 261 

air, will be very beneficial to two constitutions so deli- 
cate as yours. Adieu ! my dearest friends. It would 
be tautology to subscribe a name to a letter, every line 
of which would suit no other man in the world but the 
writer." 



262 Love of English Scenery. 



CHAPTER X. 

Walpole's iuve of English Scenery. — Richmond Hill. — Burke on 
the French Revolution. — The Berrys at Florence. — Death of 
George Selwyn. — London Solitude. — Repairs at Cliveden. — 
Burke and Fox. — The Countess of Albany. — Journal of a Day. — 
Mrs. Hobart's Party.— Ancient Trade with India.— Lady Hamil- 
ton. — A Boat Race. — Return of the Berrys.— Horace succeeds 
to the Peerage. — Epitaphium Vivi Auctoris. — His Wives. — 
Mary Berry.— Closing Years. — Love of Moving Objects. — Visit 
from Queen Charlotte. — Death of Conway. — Final Illness of 
Horace. — His Last Letter. 

It cannot, we fear, be said with truth that Walpole 
had much eye for the greater beauties of nature. 
When he recalls the travels of his youth, it is on the 
Gallery at Florence and the Fair of Reggio that his 
memory dwells, rather than on his ride to the Grande 
Chartreuse or his visit to Naples. But of the modest 
charms of English scenery he had a real and thorough 
enjoyment. The enthusiasm expressed in his Essay 
on " Modern Gardening " has a more genuine ring 
about it than is often found in his writings. In read- 
ing it, one does not doubt that his praises of " the rich 
blue prospects of Kent, the Thames-watered views in 
Berkshire, and the magnificent scale of nature in York- 
shire," were something more than compliments to 
friends who happened to have seats in those districts. 



Richmond Hill. 263 

Yet there was one spot which he admired more than 
even these captivating scenes. At the bottom of his 
heart, he was persuaded that no stream in the world 
could compare with his own reaches of the Thames, 
nor any mountain or hill with Richmond Hill. And 
what he believed in his heart, he was not always slow 
to proclaim with mouth and pen. Thus in describing 
the effects of a tempest, he writes : " The greatest ruin 
is at my nephew Dysart's at Ham, where five-and- 
thirty of the old elms are blown down. I think it is no 
loss, as I hope now one shall see the river from the 
house. He never would cut a twig to see the most 
beautiful scene upon earth." Again, after visiting 
Oatlands, then recently purchased by the Duke of 
York, Horace says : "I am returned to my own 
Thames with delight, and envy none of the princes of 
the earth." He sneers bitterly at Mr. Gilpin, who 
" despised the richness, verdure, amenity of Richmond 
Hill, when he had seen rocks and lakes in the north ; 
for size and distance of place add wonderfully to loveli- 
ness." And when he is trying to coax his Straw-Berries 
home from Florence, he tells them there is not an acre 
on the banks of the Thames that should vail the bonnet 
to Boboli. With the exception of an occasional visit 
paid during the absence of these ladies to Conway 
at Henley, the six last summers and autumns of 
Walpole's life seem to have been spent almost un- 
interruptedly at Twickenham. Some little time after 
Mrs. Clive's death, Cliveden, or Little Strawberry Hill, 
was let for a short time to Sir Robert Goodere ; but it 



264 Burkes Reflections. 

seems that, before his young friends left England, 
Horace had determined, on their return, to give Miss 
Berry and her sister this house for their lives, that he 
might have them constantly near him. The design 
succeeded. Mary and Agnes became attached to the 
place ; it continued to be their country residence for 
many years ; and when, after surviving their aged ad- 
mirer for more than half a century, they died, both 
unmarried, within a few months of each other, they were 
buried in one grave in Petersham churchyard, opposite 
Twickenham, "amidst scenes," as their epitaph records, 
" which in life they had frequented and loved." 

After despatching the farewell letter given at the end 
of our last chapter, Walpole lingered at Strawberry Hill, 
consoling himself with the society of Richmond, and 
with Burke's " Reflections on the Revolution in 
France." The shock of that earthquake had already 
made him half a Tory, and he welcomed the great 
orator's declamation with delight. " His pamphlet," 
he tells Miss Berry, " came out this day se'nnight, and 
is far superior to what was expected, even by his 
warmest admirers. I have read it twice, and though 
of three hundred and fifty pages, I wish I could repeat 
every page by heart. It is sublime, profound, and 
gay. The wit and satire are equally brilliant , and the 
whole is wise, though in some points he goes too far ; 
yet in general there is far less want of judgment than 
could be expected from him. If it could be translated, 
which, from the wit and metaphors and allusions, is 
almost impossible, I should think it would be a classic 



The Berry s at Florence. 265 

book in all countries, except in present France. To 
their tribunes it speak daggers ; though, unlike them, 
it uses none. Seven thousand copies have been taken 
off by the booksellers already, and a new edition is 
preparing. I hope you will see it soon." In a subse- 
quent letter to both his favourites, dated Strawberry 
Hill, Nov. 27, 1790, he says: "I am still here: the 
weather, though very rainy, is quite warm ; and I have 
much more agreeable society at Richmond, with small 
companies and better hours, than in town, and shall 
have till after Christmas, unless great cold drives me 
thither." Two days later, having heard of the arrival 
of the Berrys at Florence, he writes to Agnes : 

" Though I write to both at once, and reckon your 
letters to come equally from both, yet I delight in 
seeing your hand with a pen as well as with a pencil, 
and you express yourself as well with the one as with 
the other. Your part in that which I have been so 
happy as to receive this moment, has singularly obliged 
me, by your having saved me the terror of knowing you 
had a torrent to cross after heavy rain. No cat is so 
afraid of water for herself, as I am grown to be for you , 
That panic, which will last for many months, adds to 
my fervent desire of your returning early in the autumn, 
that you may have neither fresh water nor the ' silky ' 
ocean to cross in winter. Precious as our insular 
situation is, I am ready to wish with the Frenchman, 
that you could somehow or other get to it by land, — 
' Oui, c'est une isle toujours, je le scais bien ; mais, par 



266 Death of Selzuyn. 

exemple, en allant d'alentour, n'y auroit-il pas moycn 
d'y arriver par terre ?' . . . 

" Richmond, my metropolis, flourishes exceedingly. 
The Duke of Clarence arrived at his palace there last 
night, between eleven and twelve, as I came from Lady 
Douglas. His eldest brother and Mrs. Fitzherbert 
dine there to-day with the Duke of Queensberry, as his 
Grace, who called here this morning, told me, on the 
very spot where lived Charles the First, and where are 
the portraits of his principal courtiers from Cornbury. 
Queensberry has taken to that palace at last, and has 
frequently company and music there in an evening. 
I intend to go." 

He was detained in the country longer than he had 
intended by an attack of gout ; on his return to town 
he announces his recovery to Lady Ossory. 

"Berkeley Square, Jan. 28, 1791. 
" You and Lord Ossory have been so very good to 
me, Madam, that I must pay you the first tribute of 
my poor reviving fingers — I believe they never will be 
their own men again ; but as they have lived so long in 
your Ladyship's service, they shall show their attach- 
ment to the last, like Widdrington on his stumps. I 
have had another and grievous memento, the death of 
poor Selwyn ! His end was lovely, most composed and 
rational. From eight years old I had known him inti- 
mately without a cloud between us ; few knew him so 
well, and consequently few knew so well the goodness 
of his heart and nature. But I will say no more — Mon 



London Solitude. 267 

Chancelier vous dira le reste.* — No, my chancellor shall 
put an end to the session, only concluding, as Lord 
Bacon would have done for King James, with an 
apologue, ' His Majesty's recovery has turned the 
corner, and exceeding the old fable, has proved that the 
stomach can do better without the limbs than they 
could without him.' " 

About the same date he describes his life in London 
to the Berrys: 

" I wish that complaining of people for abandoning me 
were an infallible recipe for bringing them back ! but I 
doubt it will not do in acute cases. To-day, a few 
hours after writing the latter part of this, appeared Mr. 
Batt.t He asked many pardons, and I easily forgave 
him ; for the mortification was not begun. He asked 
much after you both. I had a crowd of visits besides ; 
but they all come past two o'clock, and sweep one 
another away before any can take root. My evenings 
are solitary enough, for I ask nobody to come ; nor, 
indeed, does anybody's evening begin till I am going to 
bed. I have outlived daylight as well as my contem- 
poraries. What have I not survived? The Jesuits and 
the monarchy of France ! and both without a struggle ! 
Semiramis seems to intend to add Constantinople to 
the mass of revolutions; but is not her permanence 
almost as wonderful as the contrary explosions ! I 
wish — I wish we may not be actually flippancying our- 

* Here begins Kirgate's handwriting in the MS. 
t A friend of the Berrys. He was then one of the Commissioners 
for Auditing the Public Accounts. 



268 J?e/>airs at Cliveden. 

selves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of the 
North Pole. What a vixen little island are .we, if we 
fight with the Aurora Borealis and Tippoo Saib at the 
end of Asia at the same time ! You, damsels, will be 
like the end of the conundrum, 

" ' You've seen the man who saw these wondrous sights.' 

" I cannot finish this with my own hand, for the gout 
has returned a little into my right arm and wrist, and I 
am not quite so well as I was yesterday ; but I had 
said my say, and have little to add. The Duchess of 
Gordon, t'other night, coming out of an assembly, said 
to Dundas, ' Mr. Dundas, you are used to speak in 
public ; will you call my servant ?' . . . Adieu ! I will 
begin to write again myself as soon as I can." 

In the middle of March he wrote from Strawberry 
Hill to Miss Berry : " As I have mended considerably 
for the last four days, and as we have had a fortnight 
of soft warm weather, and a south-west wind to day, I 
have ventured hither for a change of air, and to give 
orders about some repairs at Cliveden ; which, by the 
way, Mr. Henry Bunbury, two days ago, proposed to 
take off my hands for his life. I really do not think I 
accepted his offer." All the spring he vibrates between 
London and Twickenham. He writes again from the 
latter place to Miss Berry towards the end of April : 

" To-day, when the town is staring at the sudden 
resignation of the Duke of Leeds,* asking the reason, 

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, He was succeeded in 
the office by Lord Grenville. 



Burke and Fox. 269 

and gaping to know who will succeed him, I am come 
hither with an indifference that might pass for philo- 
sophy ; as the true cause is not known, which it seldom 
is. Don't tell Europe ; but I really am come to look at 
the repairs of Cliveden, and how they go on; not with- 
out an eye to the lilacs and the apple-blossoms : for even 
self can find a corner to wriggle into, though friendship 
may fit out the vessel. Mr. Berry may, perhaps, wish I 
had more political curiosity; but as I must return 
to town on Monday for Lord Cholmondeley's wedding, 
I may hear before the departure of the post, if the seals 
are given." 

Among the letters written to Miss Berry from town 
during this season, one gives an account of the famous 
quarrel between Burke and Fox in the House of 
Commons : 

" Mr Fox had most imprudently thrown out a 
panegyric on the French Revolution. His most con- 
siderable friends were much hurt, and protested to him 
against such sentiments. Burke went much farther, 
and vowed to attack these opinions. Great pains were 
taken to prevent such altercation, and the Prince of 
Wales is said to have written a dissuasive letter to 
Burke ; but he was immovable ; and on Friday, on the 
Quebec Bill, he broke out, and sounded a trumpet 
against the plot, which he denounced as carrying on 
here. Prodigious clamours and interruption arose from 
Mr. Fox's friends ; but he, though still applauding the 
French, burst into tears and lamentations on the loss of 
Burke's friendship, and endeavoured to make atone- 



270 Burke and Fox. 

ment ; but in vain, though Burke wept too. In short, 
it was the most affecting scene possible ; and un- 
doubtedly an unique one, for both the commanders were 
earnest and sincere.* Yesterday, a second act was 
expected ; but mutual friends prevailed, that the con- 
test should not be renewed : nay, on the same Bill, Mr. 
Fox made a profession of his faith, and declared he 
would venture his life in support of the present constitu- 
tion by Kings, Lords, and Commons. In short, I never 
knew a wiser dissertation, if the newspapers deliver it 
justly ; and I think all the writers in England cannot 
give more profound sense to Mr. Fox than he possesses. 
I know no more particulars, having seen nobody this 
morning yet." 

Another refers to the trial of Hastings, and sundry 
matters of public interest : 

* The following anecdote, connected with this memorable even- 
ing, is related by Mr. Curwen, at that time member for Carlisle, in 
his " Travels in Ireland :" — " The most powerful feelings were 
manifested on the adjournment of the House. While I was wait- 
ing for my carriage, Mr. Burke came to me and requested, as the 
night was wet, I would set him down. As soon as the carriage- 
door was shut, he complimented me on my being no friend to the 
revolutionary doctrines of the French ; on which he spoke with 
great warmth for a few minutes, when he paused to afford me an 
opportunity of approving the view he had taken of those measures 
in the House. At the moment I could not help feeling disinclined to 
disguise my sentiments : Mr. Burke, catching hold of the check- 
string, furiously exclaimed, ' You are one of these people ! set me 
down !' With some difficulty I restrained him ; — we had then 
reached Charing Cross : a silence ensued, which was preserved till 
we reached his house in Gerard Street, when he hurried out of the 
carriage without speaking." 



The Countess of Albany. 271 

" After several weeks spent in search of precedents 
for trials* ceasing or not on a dissolution of Parliament, 
the Peers on Monday sat till three in the morning on 
the report ; when the Chancellor and Lord Hawkes- 
bury fought for the cessation, but were beaten by a 
large majority ; which showed that Mr. Pitt has more 
weight (at present) in that House too, than — the dia- 
monds of Bengal. Lord Hawkesbury protested. The 
trial recommences on Monday next, and has already 
cost the public fourteen thousand pounds ; the accused, 
I suppose, much more. 

" The Countess of Albanyt is not only in England, in 
London, but at this very moment, I believe, in the 
palace of St. James's — not restored by as rapid a revolu- 
tion as the French, but, as was observed last night at 
supper at Lady Mount-Edgcumbe's, by that topsy- 
turvy-hood that characterises the present age. Within 
these two months the Pope has been burnt at Paris ; 
Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis Quinze, has dined 
with the Lord Mayor of London, and the Pretender's 
widow is presented to the Queen of Great Britain ! She 
is to be introduced by her great-grandfather's niece, the 
young Countess of Aylesbury. That curiosity should 
bring her hither, I do not quite wonder — still less, that 

He means impeachments. 
Louisa Maximiliana de Stolberg Gcedern, wife of the Pre- 
tender. After the death of Charles Edward in 1788, she travelled 
in Italy and France, and lived with her favourite, the celebrated 
Alfieri, to whom she is stated to have been privateiy married. She 
continued to reside at Paris, until the progress of the revolution 
compelled her to take refuge in England. 



272 The Countess of Albany. 

she abhorred her husband ; but methinks it is not very 
well-bred to his family, nor very sensible ; but a new 
way of passing eldest.* 

" Thursday night. 

" Well ! I have had an exact account of the inter- 
view of the two Queens, from one who stood close to 
them. The Dowager was announced as Princess of 
Stolberg. She was well-dressed, and not at all em- 
barrassed. The King talked to her a good deal ; but 
about her passage, the sea, and general topics : the 
Queen in the same way, but less. Then she stood 
between the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and 
had a good deal of conversation with the former ; who, 
perhaps, may have met her in Italy. Not a word be- 
tween her and the Princesses ; nor did I hear of the 
Prince ; but he was there, and probably spoke to her. 
The Queen looked at her earnestly. To add to the 
singularity of the day, it is the Queen's birth-day. 
Another odd accident : at the Opera at the Pantheon, 
Madame d'Albany was carried into the King's box, and 
sat there. It is not of a piece with her going to Court, 
that she seals with the royal arms. . . . 

" Boswell has at last published his long-promised 
' Life of Dr. Johnson,' in two volumes in quarto. I 
will give you an account of it when I have gone through 
it. I have already perceived, that in writing the history 
of Hudibras, Ralpho has not forgot himself — nor will 
others, I believe, forget him /" 

The next is also to Miss Berry : 
* A loo phrase. 



Journal of a Day. 273 

"Berkeley Square, May 26, 1791. 

" I am rich in letters from you : I received that by 
Lord Elgin's courier first, as you expected, and its elder 
the next day. You tell me mine entertain you ; tant 
mieux. It is my wish, but my wonder ; for I live so 
little in the world, that I do not know the present 
generation by sight : for, though I pass by them in the 
streets, the hats with valences, the folds above the chin 
of the ladies, and the dirty shirts and shaggy hair of the 
young men, who have levelled nobility almost as much 
as the mobility of France have, have confounded all 
individuality. Besides, if I did go to public places and 
assemblies, which my going to roost earlier prevents, 
the bats and owls do not begin to fly abroad till far in 
the night, when they begin to see and be seen. How- 
ever, one of the empresses of fashion, the Duchess of 
Gordon, uses fifteen or sixteen hours of her four-and- 
twenty. I heard her journal of last Monday. She 
first went to Handel's music in the Abbey ; she then 
clambered over the benches, and went to Hastings's 
trial in the Hall; after dinner, to the play; then to 
Lady Lucan's assembly ; after that to Ranelagh, and 
returned to Mrs. Hobart's faro-table ; gave a ball her- 
self in the evening of that morning, into which she 
must have got a good way ; and set out for Scotland the 
next day. Hercules could not have achieved a quarter 
of her labours in the same space of time." 

Before the middle of June he is settled at Twicken- 
ham. He condoles with the Berrys : 

18 



274 Mrs. Hobarfs Party. 

"Strawberry Hill, June 14, 1791. 
" I pity you ! what a dozen or fifteen uninteresting 
letters are you going to receive ! for here I am, unlikely 
to have anything to tell you worth sending. You had 
better come back incontinently — but pray do not pro- 
phesy any more ; you have been the death of our 
summer, and we are in close mourning for it in coals 
and ashes. It froze hard last night : I went out for a 
moment to look at my haymakers, and was starved. 
The contents of an English June are, hay and ice, 
orange-flowers and rheumatisms ! I am now cowering 
over the fire. Mrs. Hobart had announced a rural 
breakfast at Sans-Souci last Saturday ; nothing being 
so pastoral as a fat grandmother in a row of houses on 
Ham Common. It rained early in the morning : she 
despatched post-boys, for want of Cupids and zephyrs, 
to stop the nymphs and shepherds who tend their 
flocks in Pall Mall and St. James's Street ; but half of 
them missed the couriers and arrived. Mrs. Montagu 
was more splendid yesterday morning, and breakfasted 
seven hundred persons on opening her great room, and 
the room with the hangings of feathers.* The King 
and Queen had been with her last week. I should like 
to have heard the orations she had prepared on the 
occasion. I was neither City-mouse nor Country- 
mouse. I did dine at Fulham on Saturday with the 
Bishop of London [Porteus]. Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. 

* " There [at the opening of Hastings's trial] were the 
members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and 
exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock-hangings of Mrs. 
Montagu." — Macanlay's Essay on " Warren Hastings.'* 



Mrs. Hobart's Party. 275 

Garrick, and Hannah More were there ; and Dr. 
Beattie, whom I had never seen. He is quiet, simple, 
and cheerful, and pleased me. There ends my tale, 
this instant Tuesday ! How shall I fill a couple of 
pages more by Friday morning ! Oh ! ye ladies on the 
Common, and ye uncommon ladies in London, have 
pity on a poor gazetteer, and supply me with eclogues 
or royal panegyrics ! Moreover — or rather more under 
— I have had no letter from you these ten days, though 
the east wind has been as constant as Lord Derby.* I 
say not this in reproach, as you are so kindly punctual ; 
but as it stints me from having a single paragraph 
to answer. I do not admire specific responses to 
every article ; but they are great resources on a 
dearth. 

" Madame de Boufflers is ill of a fever, and the 
Duchesse de Biron goes next week to Switzerland ; — 
mats qu' est que cela vous fait ?" 

" June 23, 1791. 

" Woe is me ! I have not an atom of news to send you, 
but that the second edition of Mother Hubbard's Tale 
[Mrs. Hobart's party] was again spoiled on Saturday 
last by the rain ; yet she had an ample assemblage of 
company from London and the neighbourhood. The 
late Queen of France, Madame du Barry, was there; 
and the late Queen of England, Madame d'Albany, 
was not. The former, they say, is as much altered as 
her kingdom, and does not retain a trace of her former 

* To Miss Farren- 

18— a 



276 Ancient Trade with India. 

powers. I saw her on a throne in the chapel of Ver- 
sailles ; and though then pleasing in face and person, I 
thought her mi pen passee. 

" What shall I tell you more ? that Lord Hawkes- 
bury is added to the Cabinet-Council — que vous importe ? 
and that Dr. Robertson has published a ' Disquisition 
into the Trade of the Ancients with India ;' a sensible 
work — but that will be no news to you till you return. 
It was a peddling trade in those days. They now and 
then picked up an elephant's tooth, or a nutmeg, or 
one pearl, that served Venus for a pair of pendants, 
when Antony had toasted Cleopatra in a bumper of its 
fellow ; which shows that a couple was imported : but, 
alack ! the Romans were so ignorant, that waiters from 
the Tres Tabernse, in St. Apollo's Street, did not 
carry home sacks of diamonds enough to pave the 
Capitol — I hate exaggerations, and therefore I do not 
say, to pave the Appian Way. One author, I think, 
does say, that the wife of Fabius Pictor, whom he sold 
to a Proconsul, did present Livia* with an ivory bed, 
inlaid with Indian gold ; but, as Dr. Robertson does 
not mention it, to be sure he does not believe the fact 
well authenticated/' 

In one of our last extracts, Walpole refers to some 
of the French exiles, who were now assembled in large 
numbers at Richmond. Shortly afterwards came the 

* This alludes to the stories told at the time of an ivory bed, in- 
laid with gold, having been presented to Queen Charlotte by Mrs. 
Hastings, the wife of the Governor-General of India. 



Lady Hamilton. 277 

news of the escape and recapture of the French King 
and Queen. Horace writes, " I have been very much 
with the wretched fugitives at Richmond. To them it 
is perfect despair ; besides trembling for their friends 
at Paris !' Nevertheless, their distresses did not 
prevent them from taking part in the gaieties of 
Richmond : 

" Berkeley Square, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1791. 

" On Saturday evening I was at the Duke of 
Queensberry's (at Richmond, s'entend) with a small 
company : and there were Sir William Hamilton 
and Mrs. Harte ;* who, on the 3rd of next month, 
previous to their departure, is to be made Madame 
l'Envoyee a Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having pro- 
mised to receive her in that quality. Here she cannot 
be presented, where only such over-virtuous wives as 
the Duchess of Kingston and Mrs. Hastings — who 
could go with a husband in each hand — are admitted. 
Why the Margravine of Anspach, with the same pre- 
tensions, was not, I do not understand ; perhaps she 
did not attempt it. But I forget to retract, and make 
amende honorable to Mrs. Harte. I had only heard of 
her attitudes ; and those, in dumb show, I have not 
yet seen. Oh ! but she sings admirably ; has a very 
fine, strong voice ; is an excellent buffa, and an 
astonishing tragedian. She sung Nina in the highest 
perfection ; and there her attitudes were a whole 
theatre of grace and various expressions. 

* Shortly afterwards Lady Hamilton — Nelson's Lady Hamilton. 



278 A Boat Race. 

" The next evening I was again at Queensberry 
House, where the Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played 
on her harp, and the Princesse di Castelcigala, the Nea- 
politan minister's wife, danced one of her country 
dances, with castanets, very prettily, with her husband. 
Madame du Barry was there too, and I had a good 
deal of frank conversation with her about Monsieur de 
Choiseul ; having been at Paris at the end of his reign 
and at the beginning of hers, and of which I knew so 
much by my intimacy with the Duchesse de Choiseul. 

" On Monday was the boat-race. I was in the 
great room at the Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, 
Lady Di, Lord Robert Spencer, and the House of 
Bouverie, to see the boats start from the bridge to 
Thistleworth, and back to a tent erected on Lord 
Dysart's meadow, just before Lady Di.'s windows; 
whither we went to see them arrive, and where we had 
breakfast. For the second heat, I sat in my coach on 
the bridge ; and did not stay for the third. The day 
had been coined on purpose, with my favourite south- 
east wind. The scene, both up the river and down, 
was what only Richmond upon earth can exhibit. 
The crowds on those green velvet meadows and on the 
shores, the yachts, barges, pleasure and small boats, 
and the windows and gardens lined with spectators, 
were so delightful, that when I came home from that 
vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and 
solitary as a hermitage. At night there was a ball at 
the Castle, and illuminations, with the Duke's cypher, 
etc., in coloured lamps, as were the houses of Jiis 



Return of the Berry s. 279 

Royal Highness's tradesmen. I went again in the 
evening to the French ladies on the Green, where 
there was a bonfire ; but, you may believe, not to the 
ball." 



At the end of September, Walpole writes to Hannah 
More : 

" I thank you most cordially for your inquiry after 
my wives. I am in the utmost perplexity of mind about 
them; torn between hopes and fears. I believe them 
set out from Florence on their return since yesterday 
se'ennight, and consequently feel all the joy and im- 
patience of expecting them in five or six weeks : but 
then, besides fears of roads, bad inns, accidents, heats 
and colds, and the sea to cross in November at last, all 
my satisfaction is dashed by the uncertainty whether 
they come through Germany or France. I have ad- 
vised, begged, implored, that it may not be through 
those Iroquois, Lestryons, Anthropophagi, the Franks 
and then, hearing passports were abolished, and the 
roads more secure, I half consented, as they wished it, 
and the road is much shorter ; and then I repented, and 
have contradicted myself again. And now I know not 
which route they wili take ; nor shall enjoy any comfort 
from the thoughts of their return, till they are returned 
safe. 

" I am happy at and honour Miss Burney's resolution 
in casting away golden, or rather gilt chains : others, 
out of vanity, would have worn them till they had 



280 Return of the Bcrrys. 

eaten into the bone. On that charming young woman's 
chapter* I agree with you perfectly." 

Shortly after the date of the last letter, the Berrys 
were back in England. Their stay in Italy, which had 
been determined partly by motives of economy, was 
shortened in consequence of Walpole's eagerness for 
their return. In his anxiety, he entreated them to 
draw on his bankers in case of any financial difficulty ; 
and in November, 1791, he had the satisfaction of 
installing them at Little Strawberry Hill. This was 
not accomplished without some vexation both to him 
and them. An ill-natured rumour, which found its way 

* Miss Burney had recently resigned her situation about the 
Queen's person. Madame d'Arblay (Miss Burney) has entered 
in her Diary the following portion of a letter addressed to her by 
Walpole : 

" As this will come to you by my servant, give me leave to add a 
word on your most unfounded idea that I can forget you, because 
it is almost impossible for me ever to meet you. Believe me, I 
heartily regret that privation, but would not repine, were your 
situation, either in point of fortune or position, equal in any degree 
to your merit. But were your talents given to be buried in 
obscurity ? You have retired from the world to a closet at Court — 
where, indeed, you will still discover mankind, though not disclose 
it ; for if you could penetrate its characters, in the earliest glimpse of 
its superficies, will it escape your piercing eye when it shrinks from 
your inspection, knowing that you have the mirror of truth in your 
pocket ? I will not embarrass you by saying more, nor would have 
you take notice of, or reply to what I have said : judge only, that 
feeling hearts reflect, not forget. Wishes that are empty look like 
vanity ; my vanity is to be thought capable of esteeming you as 
much as you deserve, and to be reckoned, though a very distant, a 
most sincere friend, — and give me leave to say, dear Madam, your 
most obedient humble servant, HOR. Walpolk. 

" Strawberry Hill, October '90." 



Horace succeeds to the Peerage. 281 

into the newspapers, attributing the attachment shown 
by the Berry family for Walpole to interested motives, 
aroused the indignation of Miss Berry, and for the 
moment threatened to produce an estrangement. The 
cloud, however, blew over : the intimacy was resumed, 
and in a subsequent letter to the sisters, the old man 
expresses his gratitude at finding that they could bear 
to pass half their time with an antediluvian without dis- 
covering any ennui or disgust. 

Almost immediately after he had recovered the 
Berrys, Walpole became Earl of Orford by the death 
of his nephew. He refers to this event, and his feel- 
ings respecting it, in the following letter to Lady 
Ossory : 

"Berkeley Square, Dec. 10, 1791. 

" Your Ladyship has so long accustomed me to your 
goodness and partiality, that I am not surprised at your 
being kind on an occasion that is generally productive 
of satisfaction. That is not quite the case with me. 
Years ago, a title would have given me no pleasure, and 
at any time the management of a landed estate, which 
I am too ignorant to manage, would have been a 
burthen. That I am now to possess, should it prove a 
considerable acquisition to my fortune, which I much 
doubt, I would not purchase at the rate of the three 
weeks of misery which I have suffered, and which 
made me very ill, though I am now quite recovered. 
It is a story much too full of circumstances, and too 
disagreeable to me to be couched in a letter ; some time 
or other I may perhaps be at leisure and composed 



282 Epitaphium Vivi Auctoris. 

enough to relate in general. — At present I have been so 
overwhelmed with business that I am now writing these 
few lines as fast as I can, to save the post, as none goes 
to-morrow, and I should be vexed not to thank your 
Ladyship and Lord Ossory by the first that departs. 
As, however, I owe it to you and to my poor nephew, I 
will just say that I am perfectly content. He has given 
me the whole Norfolk estate, heavily charged, I believe, 
but that is indifferent. I had reason to think that he 
had disgraced, by totally omitting me — but unhappy as 
his intellects often were, and beset as he was by mis- 
creants, he has restored me to my birth-right, and I 
shall call myself obliged to him, and be grateful to his 
memory, as I am to your Ladyship, and shall be, as I 
have so long been, your devoted servant, by whatever 
name I may be forced to call myself." 

This letter has no signature. The writer for some 
time rarely used his new title when he could avoid it. 
Some of his letters after his succession to the peerage 
are signed "the late H. W.," and some, " the uncle of 
the late Earl of Orford." In 1792, he wrote the follow- 
ing " Epitaphium vivi Auctoris :" 

" An estate and an earldom at seventy-four ! 
Had I sought them or wished them 'twould add one fear more. 
That of making a countess when almost fourscore. 
But Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season, 
Though unkind to my limbs, has still left me my reason, 
And whether she lowers or lifts me I'll try, 
In the plain simple style I have lived in, to die : 
For ambition too humble, for meanness too high." 

He could not escape the suspicion of having medi- 



His Wives. 283 

tated the folly referred to in these lines. His much 
talked of devotion to his "sweet damsels" rendered 
this impossible. There is a tradition, handed down 
by the Lord Lansdowne of the last generation, that 
he would have gone through the ceremony of marriage 
with either sister, to make sure of their society, and 
confer rank and fortune on the family ; as he had the 
power of charging the Orford estate with a jointure of 
£2,000 a year. There is just so much evidence in sup- 
port of this story that he does appear to have avowed 
in society his readiness to do this for Mary Berry, who 
was clearly the object of his preference. But he does 
not seem to have ever made any such proposal to her, 
nor even to have spoken to her on the subject. In a 
letter to a friend written at the time, Miss Berry says : 
" Although I have no doubt that Lord Orford said to 
Lady D. every word that she repeated — for last winter, 
at the time the C's.* talked about the matter, he went 
about saying all this and more to everybody that would 
hear him — but I always thought it rather to frighten 
and punish them than seriously wishing it himself. 
And why should he ? when, without the ridicule or the 
trouble of a marriage, he enjoys almost as much of 
my society, and every comfort from it, that he could 
in the nearest connexion ?" Walpole was almost cer- 
tainly of the same opinion as Miss Berry. He would 
have shrunk from the lasting stigma of a marriage, 
though he was content to bear passing jests which, 
perhaps, the attention of his young friends rendered 

• The Ctiolmondelcys. 



284 His Wives. 

even agreeable. In May, 1792, he writes to Lady 
Ossory : 

" I am indeed much obliged for the transcript of the 
letter on my ' Wives.' Miss Agnes has a finesse in her 
eyes and countenance that does not propose itself to 
you, but is very engaging on observation, and has often 
made herself preferred to her sister, who has the most 
exactly fine features, and only wants colour to make her 
face as perfect as her graceful person ; indeed neither 
has good health nor the air of it. Miss Mary's eyes 
are grave, but she is not so herself; and, having much 
more application than her sister, she converses readily, 
and with great intelligence, on all subjects. Agnes is 
more reserved, but her compact sense very striking, and 
always to the purpose. In short, they are extraordinary 
beings, and I am proud of my partiality for them ; and 
since the ridicule can only fall on me, and not on 
them, I care not a straw for its being said that I am in 
love with one of them — people shall choose which : it 
is as much with both as either, and I am infinitely too 
old to regard the qu'cn dit on." 

Nothing could be more sentimental than Walpole's 
language to and about these ladies, but his admiration 
and regard for them were rational enough. There 
was no dotage in the praises he lavished on their attrac- 
tions and accomplishments. However much of their 
first social success may have been due to him, they 
proved able to perpetuate and extend it by their 
personal qualities alone, without the aid of large fortune 
or family connexion. And the tenor of his latest 



Mary Berry. 285 

letters seems to show that this old man of the world 
derived benefit as well as amusement from their con- 
versation. Their refinement and unpresuming moral 
worth were perhaps the highest influences to which 
his worn brain and heart were susceptible. One cannot 
help remarking that the respect with which he treats 
Mary Berry is a much stronger feeling than that which 
he displays for Hannah More. Though a good deal 
younger, Miss Berry had travelled more, and seen 
more of society, than the excellent schoolmistress from 
the West of England ; and with this more varied ex- 
perience came wider sympathies and larger toleration. 
Madam Hannah's fervent desires for the improvement 
of her friends, though always manifest, were not always 
accompanied by skill to make her little homilies accept- 
able. Her letters to Walpole betray some conscious- 
ness of a deficiency in this respect, and her embarrass- 
ment was not lost upon " the pleasant Horace," as she 
called her correspondent. He complained of the too 
great civility and cold complimentality of her style. 
The lady of Cowslip Green, who dedicated small 
poems to him, adorned her letters with literary allu- 
sions, and dropped occasional hints for his benefit, was 
always, in his eyes, a blue-stocking ; and this the ladies 
of Cliveden never were. He was incessantly divided 
between his wish to treat the elder lady with deference, 
and a mischievous inclination to startle her notions of 
propriety. When he is tempted to transgress, he 
checks himself in some characteristic phrase : " I could 
titter a plnsieurs reprises; but I am too old to be im- 



286 Mary Berry. 

proper, and you are too modest to be impropcred to." 

But the temptation presently returns. In short, Wal- 

pole subscribed to Miss More's charities, echoed her 

denunciations of the slave-trade, applauded her Cheap 

Repository Tracts, and was ever Saint Hannah's most 

sincere friend and humble servant ; but he could not 

help indemnifying himself now and then by a smile at 

her effusive piety and bustling benevolence. On the 

other hand, the entire and unqualified respect which 

Lord Orford entertained for Miss Berry's abilities and 

character was shown, not merely by the particular 

expressions of affection and esteem so profusely 

scattered through his letters to her, and by the whole 

tone of the correspondence between them, but still 

more decisively by the circumstance that he entrusted 

to her the care of preparing a posthumous edition of 

his works, and bequeathed to her charge all necessary 

papers for that purpose. This he did in fact, for 

though in his will he appointed her father* as his 

editor, it was well understood that that was merely a 

device to avoid the publication of her name, and the 

task was actually performed by her alone. 

During the rest of Walpole's life, three-fourths of 

each year were spent by him in constant association 

with the Berrys either at Twickenham or in London. 

The months which they employed in visits to other 

friends or to watering-places, he passed for the most 

part at Strawberry Hill, sending forth constant letters 

* The weak and indolent character of Mr. Berry made him 
always and everywhere a cipher. 



Closing Years. 287 

to Yorkshire, Cheltenham, Broadstairs, or where- 
ever else his wives might be staying. He laughs at 
his own assiduity. " I put myself in mind of a scene 
in one of Lord Lansdowne's plays, where two ladies 
being on the stage, and one going off, the other says, 
' Heaven, she is gone I Well, I must go and write to 
her.' This was just my case yesterday." The post- 
man at Cheltenham complained of being broken down 
by the continual arrival of letters from Twickenham. 
At other times, Walpole's pen was now comparatively 
idle. When in town, he beguiled the hours as best he 
could with the customers who still resorted to his 
coffee-house to discuss the news of the day. But he 
generally preferred his villa till quite the end of 
autumn. " What could I do with myself in London ?" 
he asks Miss Berry. "All my playthings are here, 
and I have no playfellows left there ! Reading com- 
poses little of my pastime either in town or country. 
A catalogue of books and prints, or a dull history of a 
county, amuse me sufficiently ; for now I cannot open 
a French book, as it would keep alive ideas that I 
want to banish from my thoughts." At Strawberry, 
accordingly, he remained, trifling with his endless 
store of medals and engravings, and watching from 
his windows the traffic up and down the Thames. He 
has expressed his fondness for moving objects in a 
passage dated in December, 1793 : 

" I am glad Lord and Lady Warwick are pleased 
with their new villa [at Isleworth] : it is a great 
favourite with me. In my brother's time [Sir Edward 



280 Love of Moving Objects. 

W.'s] I used to sit with delight in the bow-window in 
the great room, for besides the lovely scene of Rich- 
mond, with the river, park, and barges, there is an 
incessant ferry for foot passengers between Richmond 
and Isleworth, just under the Terrace ; and on Sundays 
Lord Shrewsbury pays for all the Catholics that come 
to his chapel from the former to the latter, and Mrs. 
Keppel has counted an hundred in one day, at a penny 
each. I have a passion for seeing passengers, provided 
they do pass ; and though I have the river, the road, 
and two foot-paths before my Blue Room at Strawberry, 
I used to think my own house dull whenever I came 
from my brother's. Such a partiality have I for 
moving objects, that in advertisements of country- 
houses I have thought it a recommendation when 
there was a N.B. of three stage-coaches pass by the door 
every day. On the contrary, I have an aversion to a 
park, and especially for a walled park, in which the 
capital event is the coming of the cows to water. A 
park-wall with ivy on it and fern near it, and a back 
parlour in London in summer, with a dead creeper and 
a couple of sooty sparrows, are my strongest ideas of 
melancholy solitude. A pleasing melancholy is a very 
august personage, but not at all good company." 

This love of life and society clung to him till the end. 
Notwithstanding his crippled condition, he entertained 
the Duchess of York at Strawberry Hill in the autumn 
of 1793, and received a visit from Queen Charlotte 
there as late as the summer of 1795. He was probably 



Visit from Queen Charlotte. 289 

honest in disclaiming all vanity at being the poorest 
Earl in England. When pressed by Lady Ossory to 
take his seat in the House of Peers, he replied : " I 
know that having determined never to take that 
unwelcome seat, I should only make myself ridiculous 
by fancying it could signify a straw whether I take it 
or not. If I have anything of character, it must dangle 
on my being consistent. I quitted and abjured Parlia- 
ment near twenty years ago : I never repented, and I 
will not contradict myself now." If, however, there 
was any occasion on which his earldom gave him 
pleasure, it was undoubtedly when the Seneschal of 
Strawberry Castle was to do homage to Royal guests. 
Referring to Macaulay's taunt that Walpole had the 
soul of a gentleman usher, Miss Berry remarks that 
the critic only repeated what Lord Orford often said 
of himself, that from his knowledge of old ceremonials 
and etiquettes he was sure that in a former state of 
existence he must have been a gentleman usher about 
the time of Elizabeth. Walpole sends Conway a 
brief account of the Queen's visit : 

^Strawberry Hill, July 2, 1795. 

" As you are, or have been, in town, your daughter 
[Mrs. Darner] will have told you in what a bustle I am, 
preparing, not to visit, but to receive an invasion of 
royalties to-morrow ; and cannot even escape them, 
like Admiral Cornwallis, though seeming to make a 
semblance ; for I am to wear a sword, and have ap- 
pointed two aides-de-camp, my nephews, George and 



290 Visit from Queen Charlotte. 

Horace Churchill. If I fall, as ten to one but I do, 
to be sure it will be a superb tumble, at the feet of a 
Queen and eight daughters of Kings : for, besides the 
six Princesses, I am to have the Duchess of York and 
the Princess of Orange ! Woe is me, at seventy-eight, 
and with scarce a hand and foot to my back ! Adieu ! 

" Yours, etc., 
"A Poor Old Remnant." 

"July 7, 1795. 

" I am not dead of fatigue with my Royal visitors, 
as I expected to be, though I was on my poor lame 
feet three whole hours. Your daughter, who kindly 
assisted me in doing the honours, will tell you the 
particulars, and how prosperously I succeeded. The 
Queen was uncommonly condescending and gracious, 
and deigned to drink my health when I presented 
her with the last glass, and to thank me for all my 
attentions. Indeed, my memory de la vieille cour was 
but once in default. As I had been assured that her 
Majesty would be attended by her Chamberlain, yet 
was not, I had no glove ready when I received her 
at the step of her coach ; yet she honoured me with her 
hand to lead her upstairs ; nor did I recollect my 
omission when I led her down again. Still, though 
gloveless, I did not squeeze the royal hand, as Vice- 
Chamberlain Smith did to Queen Mary."* 

* Queen Mary asked some of her attendant ladies what a squeeze 
of the hand was supposed to intimate. They said " Love." 
" Then," said the Queen, " my vice-chamberlain must be violently 
in love with me, for he always squeezes my hand." 



Final Illness. 291 

Conway died suddenly two days after the date of the 
last letter. He had received the truncheon of a Field- 
Marshal less than two years before. Like his old 
friend Horace, he attained the last distinction of his 
life when he was too old to enjoy it. Horace lingered 
on twenty months longer in constantly increasing 
debility. In the latter part of December, 1796, he was 
seen to be sinking, and his friends prevailed on him to 
remove from Strawberry Hill to Berkeley Square, to 
be nearer assistance in case of any sudden seizure. 
The account of his last days is thus given by Miss 
Berry : " When not immediately suffering from pain, 
his mind was tranquil and cheerful. He was still 
capable of being amused, and of taking some part in 
conversation ; but during the last weeks of his life, 
when fever was superadded to his other ills, his mind 
became subject to the cruel hallucination of supposing 
himself neglected and abandoned by the only persons 
to whom his memory clung, and whom he always 
desired to see. In vain they recalled to his recollection 
how recently they had left him, and how short had 
been their absence ; it satisfied him for the moment, 
but the same idea recurred as soon as he had lost 
sight of them. At last nature, sinking under the 
exhaustion of weakness, obliterated all ideas but those 
of mere existence, which ended without a struggle on 
the 2nd of March, 1797. 

Horace Walpole's last letter was addressed, as was 
fitting, to Lady Ossory, then almost the sole survivor 
of his early friends : 






292 Last Letter* 

"Jan. 15, 1797. 

" My dear Madam, — 

" You distress me infinitely by showing my idle 
notes, which I cannot conceive can amuse anybody. 
My old-fashioned breeding impels me every now and 
then to reply to the letters you honour me with writing, 
but in truth very unwillingly, for I seldom can have 
anything particular to say ; I scarce go out of my own 
house, and then only to two or three private places, 
where I see nobody that really knows anything, and 
what I learn comes from newspapers, that collect in- 
telligence from coffee - houses ; consequently what I 
neither believe nor report. At home I see only a few 
charitable elders, except about four-score nephews and 
nieces of various ages, who are each brought to me 
about once a year, to stare at me as the Methusaleh of 
the family, and they can only speak of their own con- 
temporaries, which interest me no more than if they 
talked of their dolls, or bats and balls. Must not the 
result of all this, Madam, make me a very entertaining 
correspondent ? And can such letters be worth show- 
ing ? or can I have any spirit when so old, and reduced 
to dictate ? 

" Oh ! my good Madam, dispense with me from such 
a task, and think how it must add to it to apprehend 
such letters being shown. Pray send me no more such 
laurels, which I desire no more than their leaves when 
decked with a scrap of tinsel, and stuck on twelfth- 
cakes that lie on the shop-boards of pastrycooks at 
Christmas. I shall be quite content with a sprig of 



Personal Traits. 293 

rosemary thrown after me, when the parson of the 
parish commits my dust to dust. Till then, pray, 
Madam, accept the resignation of your 

"Ancient Servant, 

"Orford." 

Besides numerous portraits of Horace Walpole, we 
have two pen-and-ink sketches of him, one by Miss 
Hawkins, the other by Pinkerton. The lady describes* 
him as she knew him before 1772 : " His figure was 
not merely tall, but more properly long and slender to 
excess ; his complexion, and particularly his hands, of 
a most unhealthy paleness. His eyes were remark- 
ably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively ; his 
voice was not strong, but his tones were extremely 
pleasant. ... I do not remember his common gait ; 
he always entered a room in that style of affected 
delicacy which fashion had then made almost natural : 
chapcau bas between his hands, as if he wished to com- 
press it, or under his arm ; knees bent, and feet on 
tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress in visiting 
was most usually, in summer, when I most saw him, 
a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little 
silver, or of white silk worked in the tambour ; par- 
tridge silk stockings, and gold buckles ; ruffles and frill, 
generally lace. I remember, when a child, thinking 
him very much under-dressed, if at any time, except in 
mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer no 
powder, but his wig combed straight, and showing his 
* 'Anecdotes,' etc., by Laetitia Matilda Hawkins, 1822. 



294 Personal Traits. 

very smooth, pale forehead, and queued behind ; in 
winter, powder." 

Miss Hawkins, who was recording in her old age the 
impressions of her girlhood, is clearly mistaken as to 
the height of Walpole's figure. Pinkerton paints him 
as he was at a later period, and adds several details of 
his domestic habits. We give the main part of the 
antiquary's description,* and generally in his own words : 
The person of Horace Walpole was short and slender, 
but compact and neatly formed. When viewed from 
behind, he had somewhat of a boyish appearance, 
owing partly to the simplicity of his dress. His laugh 
was forced and uncouth, and his smile not the most 
pleasing. His walk was enfeebled by the gout, which 
not only affected his feet, but attacked his hands to 
such a degree that his fingers were always swelled and 
deformed, and discharged large chalk-stones once or 
twice a year. When at Strawberry Hill, he generally 
rose about nine o'clock, and appeared in the breakfast- 
room, his favourite Blue Room overlooking the 
Thames. His approach was proclaimed, and attended, 
by a favourite little dog, the legacy of the Marquise du 
Deffand ; and which ease and attention had rendered so 
fat that it could hardly move. The dog had a liberal 
share of his breakfast ; and as soon as the meal was 
over, Walpole would mix a large basinful of bread 
and milk, and throw it out of the window for the 
squirrels, who presently came down from the high trees 
to enjoy their allowance. Dinner was served in the 
* ' Walpoliana,' Preface. 



Personal Traits. 295 

small parlour, or large dining-room, as it happened ; 
in winter, generally the former. His valet supported 
him downstairs ; and he ate most moderately of 
chicken, pheasant, or any light food. Pastry he dis- 
liked, as difficult of digestion, though he would taste a 
morsel of venison pie. Never but once that he drank 
two glasses of white wine,* did Pinkerton see him taste 
any liquor, except ice-water. A pail of ice was 
placed under the table, in which stood a decanter of 
water, from which he supplied himself with his 
favourite beverage. If his guests liked even a 
moderate quantity of wine, they must have called for 
it during dinner, for almost instantly after he rang the 
bell to order coffee upstairs. Thither he would pass 
about five o'clock ; and generally resuming his place 
on the sofa, would sit till two o'clock in the morning, 
in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular anecdotes, 
strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally 
sending for books or curiosities, or passing to the 
library, as any reference happened to arise in con- 
versation. After his coffee he tasted nothing ; but 
the snuff-box of tabac d'etrennes, from Fribourg's, was 
not forgotten, and was replenished from a canister 
lodged in an ancient marble urn of great thickness, 
which stood in the window-seat, and served to secure 
its moisture and rich flavour. Such was a private 
rainy day of Horace Walpole. The forenoon quickly 
passed in roaming through the numerous apartments 

* As early as 1754 he wrote to Bentley : "You know I never 
drink three glasses of any wine." 



296 Personal Traits. 

of the house, in which, after twenty visits, still some- 
thing - new would occur ; and he was indeed constantly 
adding fresh acquisitions. Sometimes a walk in the 
grounds would intervene, on which occasions he would 
go out in his slippers through a thick dew ; and he 
never wore a hat.* He said that, on his first visit to 
Paris, he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he saw 
every little meagre Frenchman, whom even he could 
have thrown down with a breath, walking without a 
hat, which he could not do without a certainty of that 
disease which the Germans say is endemical in 
England, and is termed by the nation le catch-cold. 
The first trial cost him a slight fever, but he got over 
it, and never caught cold afterwards : draughts of 
air, damp rooms, windows open at his back, all situa- 
tions were alike to him in this respect. He would 
even show some little offence at any solicitude ex- 
pressed by his guests on such an occasion ; and would 
say, with a half smile of seeming crossness, " My back 
is the same with my face, and my neck is like my 
nose." 

* " A hat, you know, I never wear my breast I never button, 
nor wear great coats, etc." — Letter to Cole, Feb. 14, 1782. 



THE END. 



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With Portraits on Copper. Cloth, $2.50. 

' A whole library has been written about Sir Joshua, but this is the best digest of 
the subject we know.' — Athenceum. 

DEAN SWIFT: HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS. By 

Gerald Moriarty, Balliol College, Oxford. With Nine 
Portraits. Crown 8vo., $2.50. 

' Mr. Moriarty is to be heartily congratulated upon having produced an extremely 
sound and satisfactory little book.' — National Observer. 

HORACE WALPOLE AND HIS WORLD. Select 
Passages from his Letters. With Eight Copper Plates, after 
Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Lawrence. Crown 
8vo., cloth, $2.50. 

'A compact representative selection, with just enough connecting text to make it 
read consecutively, with a pleasantly-written introduction.' — Atherueum. 

FANNY BURNEY AND HER FRIENDS. Select 
Passages from Her Diary. Edited by L. B. SEELEY, M.A., 
late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. With Nine 
Portraits on Copper, after Reynolds, Gainsborough, 
Copley, and West. Cloth, $2.50. 

' The charm of the volume is heightened by nine illustrations of some of the master- 
pieces of English art, and it would not be possible to find a more captivating present 
for anyone beginning to appreciate the characters of the last century.' — Academy. 

' A really valuable book.' — World. 

MRS. THRALE, AFTERWARDS MRS. PIOZZI. By 
L. B. SEELEY, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. With Nine Portraits on Copper, after Hogarth, 
Reynolds, Zoffany, and others. Cloth, $2.50. 

' Mr. Seeley had excellent material to write upon, and he has turned it to the best 
advantage.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 

' This sketch is better worth having than the autobiography, for it is infinitely the 
more complete and satisfying.' — Globe. 

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. By Arthur 
R. ROPES, M.A., sometime Fellow of King's College, Cam- 
bridge. With Nine Portraits, after Sir Godfrey Kneller, 
etc. Crown 8vo., §2.50. 

'Embellished as it is with a number of excellent plates, we cannot imagine a more 
welcome or delightful present.' — National Observer. 



NEW YORK: 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-157. FIFTH AVENUE. 



PRESS NOTICES. 



DEAN SWIFT. 

1 It is a singularly bright and readable account of Swift and 
his works. Those who know their Swift will enjoy the book as 
offering a pleasant reminder of many good things ; while those 
to whom Swift is little more than a great name will be able to 
gather, with little or no exertion, a very vivid picture of the man 
and his life. . . . Very readable, too, is the chapter on "Swift 
in the Great World." Mr. Moriarty has there strung together, 
chiefly from Swift's journals and letters, a number of most 
entertaining examples of Swift's tyrannical behaviour in 
soci ety. ' — Spectator. 

' Mr. Moriarty is to be heartily congratulated upon having 
produced an extremely sound and satisfactory little book. He 
states his facts with candour and accuracy, choosing rather that 
his readers should draw their own inferences than be fatigued 
by his ; but he is no wobbler, and where a bold touch is required, 
his hand is decided and firm. . . . The reproductions of portraits 
(in particular those of Stella and Vanessa) are a highl)' interest- 
ing and attractive feature in a highly interesting and attractive 
book.' — National Observer. 

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 

' The book is extremely well done, and it fulfils excellently its 
appointed task of standing between the literary essay and the 
extremely bulky and voluminous memoir.' — Academy. 

' It is well written and beautifully illustrated with repro- 
ductions of the master's work. The author has drawn his 
biography from numerous sources, and pursued Sir Joshua 
industriously through many and varied volumes, in which 
characteristic glimpses of him appear.' — Black and White. 

MRS. THRALE. 

. . . ' Before the appearance of the present volume there was 
no regular biography of the lady whose name is often associated 
with some of her most famous contemporaries. Mr. Seeley has 
performed his task with skill and excellent judgment. Though 
he writes in evident sympathy with his subject, he is rigidly 
impartial.' — Athenteum. 

' Mr. Seeley had excellent material to work upon, and he has 
turned it to the best advantage. The volume, which will be a 
fit companion to the editor's " Fanny Burney," contains some 
excellent illustrations.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 



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